The Aftermath
by lumos-aeternum
Summary: Much was lost in the final showdown with Voldemort, and Harry Potter left the Wizarding World, choosing self-enforced seclusion. Ten years on, though, and events begin to unfold which will not only bring him from his isolation, but will force him to confront a foe beyond anything he has ever imagined. Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, the world, nor characters.
1. Prologue: A Toast

Harry leaned back, relaxing for the first time in weeks. He signalled to the bartender and a firewhiskey and a butterbeer slid down the bar to him and his companion. Harry's eyelids were thick with sleep. His hair, mussed as usual, but with an unkempt flavor that revealed his recent nonchalance about it. His facial hair stood out starkly on a face once pure and smooth.

His companion was small, small and sad. His life, too had changed dangerously, of late. He fingered his butterbeer with trepidation, but seeing his companions precedent, shrugged and took a drink. The butterbeer slid smoothly down his elven throat. He could feel that soaring sensation that followed a butterbeer rising in the back of his mind. It felt better just to let it go.

Harry, with his firewhiskey, said nothing for a long time. He drank deeply and fast. He wanted to sink away, to sail into a distance clouded by his own thoughts and dislikings. He felt lost and alone, but he did have Dobby there yet. He glanced at Dobby. The house-elf had drunk more than he had at first intended. They both had. Harry smiled a sardonic smile. He felt a cruel pleasure in it. It felt painful, but so did life. He enjoyed it because he felt something other than bitterness and that emptiness.

At last, drink nearly empty, and with little will to call for another drink, Harry tossed a few galleons down and turned to Dobby. With his last sip in the air, he said, "To the dead." Dobby, slipping sideways on his stool, his look of contentment draining slowly from his face, forming a half-comical, half-serious expression, nodded and raised his glass shakily. They drained their last and with a last look of understanding Disapparated.

Harry reappeared in a squalid room above a Muggle shop. The rent was cheap; no one knew he was here. It was perfect. After the big to-do that his final confrontation with Voldemort had brought, he couldn't be out in public much. The looks, the stares, the attention, it was all too much for him. Not after all that had passed, all who had passed. He had survived on the little bits he could earn and the small fortune still remaining in his parent's vault, in his vault.

When he thought back to the days of Hogwarts, he shuddered with the memories that licked at his mind like ice-flames. If the Death Eaters, Voldemort's followers had killed everyone he knew, he would have been happier. Not happy, no that was the wrong word. He would have felt less pain, less lasting pain. Some had died, the lucky ones. That barrier Voldemort had set to keep everyone out, that had been the worst. Harry had no idea what it had done, no one did. Maybe Dumbledore would have known. Those who approached it were never the same; they knew no one, they lived different lives and despised anything relating to their old selves. St. Mungo's was stumped.

Harry had spent the first four years researching, from world's end to world's end, from the highest light magic to the lowest dark. Nothing. Researching was more of Hermione's thing, anyway, but he could not give up. He pursued every art and science in the wizarding world, even divination, to no avail. Five of his greatest friends were affected. They did not know him and did not want to know him. Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Luna. The group he had associated most with in school. They had all come charging in unison, spells flung at the barrier. No warning. The others had had warning.

He felt a grim sense of loss and anger at the others. They had survived, but he could not bear to be with them. It felt worse than the shallow, tired moments with Dobby. The Weasleys had assured him he would be welcome with them, but he never took them up on it. They had followed him, trying to help. He ran; he hid. He hated them as he hated himself. If he ever saw a familiar face in a crowd, he would turn and walk away. They were dead to him, that whole world. He was their greatest hero, their greatest benefactor, but he could not stand to face a single one of them. There had been no parades, there never would be. He was the Boy Who Lived, their Chosen one, but not anymore.

So life had been. He did not reflect on it much. He just accepted it and stayed alone in his self-inflicted hell. It reminded him grimly of the time he had hidden in his godfather's parent's room. Hermione had led him out of that and Ginny had slapped some perspective in him. No one could do that now. He glared at the fire stirring on his kitchen burner. The stew, seeping lazily over the top, began to burn as it touched the hot element. It felt appropriate, somehow, to watch it destroy itself. Slumped in his chair, he waited. Waited for nothing.

But nothing found him. The door, unknown to all but the Muggle owner he never saw, was suddenly opened.


	2. Chapter 1: A Visitor

Harry's eyes, dazed from the sudden dim light from the hallway, could not quite make out the figure before him. It seemed a misshapen hulk, and for a moment seemed to embody several persons in one instance, several bodies all atop each other. Then, his eyes adjusted. It was a young woman, probably in her early twenties.

Her general appearance belied the calm compassion of her eyes. She clearly had a difficult life. Her clothing and hair spoke of hard times, but her mouth and chin of defiant exertion, of endless struggle against that which she faced. She would have been pretty had her face not expressed so much emotion, so much crushed life. It was etched into her forehead as much as those words were upon Harry's hand.

Harry gaped. He stared for a moment, a moment too long, in wonder at this strange apparition. She saw his look but did not seem to understand the oddness of her appearance, especially in this little apartment. Really, the appearance of either or both of the people would mean very little but for the circumstances. The circumstances meant all. And that is why his expression reflected more understanding of the oddity than hers.

She said nothing.

"Um..." his voice was hoarse from an awkwardness he had never known. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same."

"Excuse me?" he asked, slightly offended.

"For what?" she asked, her brisk voice sounded less expressive than her face seemed to show.

"This is my lot. Why have you entered my home?" Harry said with a thinly disguised agitation in his voice. The strength of his voice was growing, his familiarity aligning with the situation.

"Oh, is it?" she said simply.

"Yes! What do you want?" he felt a rush of pleasant emotions that he associated with anything different, anything distracting. He knew he hated this woman.

She smiled. "You ask many questions. I was just stopping by. They told me I should. They told me. You understand that, don't you?" she added with a worried tone.

"Err, yes. I understand," his voice spoke, edging toward anxious amusement. "Thanks for stopping by." His arm moved towards the doorjamb casually, but with force.

"You aren't going to ask me inside?" she asked, innocence flooding her words.

"I hadn't planned on it. They never told me to admit you, did they?"

"Well, I suppose not. They just told me to stop by."

"And you have. It was a pleasure to meet you. Give them my best. Goodbye," he rushed in.

"I will. Oh, but we haven't met yet, not formally. I'm Jan," Jan said.

Harry replied, "Nice to meet you Ms. Jan-"

"Just Jan."

"Right. Nice to meet you Jan. I'm -"

"You're Harry Potter. I know. They said so."

He stopped short. His throat seemed to dry like a desert. His bemused attitude disappeared and fearful anger took its place. He ran through his mind. Who would look for him? The Weasleys? No, they gave up years ago. Schoolmates? Balderdash, they were afraid of him, after the Lavender incident. She had wanted to talk about Ron. That had not gone well. The relatives of Death Eaters? Maybe, but they had all disappeared about when he had. They knew it was over. Yet, still, there were many who would look for him. You cannot avoid being the Chosen one completely.

He would have to move. He looked about him with a pang of regret. He had begun to feel comfortable enough here. He forgot about her presence. She reminded him.

"You are Harry Potter, right?"

"Errr...no. Sorry, you've got the wrong guy," he lied.

"Oh, no you are. I can see the scar. They said it would be there and it is. You're taller than they described, but it's definitely you," she said in an amused sort of way. "Why did you lie?"

He shook his head, "Please, just go."

"Oh, I've upset you. Please don't be upset. They just asked me to come by. I don't think they wanted to upset you."

"Just go." His voice was cold and firm. He looked at her and her at him. She nodded and left. He felt the wood tremble slightly as he felt it slide through his fingers, clicking closed smoothly. He bolted the door and set a locking spell upon it. The floor looked very inviting. He sat. The window looked darker than usual. His world seemed smaller. He fell asleep sitting there. He forgot about the strange girl in the morning.

* * *

Harry went about his life, such as it was. He had, of late, taken to working at a construction site in eastern London. The land had housed a very old building, centuries of history, until inspectors had proclaimed it unsuited for remaining erect and no society had approached it to preserve the history, the legacy of that structure.

It was an odd building, four stories built in such an unusual way that the demolitionists had taken months to determine how best to knock it down. All the usual support methods and layouts were tossed out the window when this building was made. It was as though it were held up by a force outside its own walls or any measure known to man. It was like magic. But, like anything of stone and flesh, it was brought low and crumpled. With a visual heave, it gave up the ghost and left a dust path a mile wide.

This was the new building, the one to replace the old. Harry liked the feel of steel beneath his fingers, the feel of aching joints and straining his body to the maximum. He liked the feeling of creation, just so long as he was a minor part in it and could not see the finished glory of something new and golden. He liked the half-skeletal being he entered, the rib cage he clanged upon. He felt as if they were developing a soul for it, creating the being's inmost self, first. He loved and hated that building.

The other workers did not know what to think of the disheveled, hard working man. He did good work, but largely avoided contact with any of them, when he could avoid it. He always refused to go out for a drink with the gang and ate lunch by himself, out on a girder fourteen stories above the ground. He had an ease on the heights like a man afraid of nothing. He completed every task put to him, no matter the personal pain or injury he sustained. He rarely sustained a lasting injury.

To Harry, life was as it had to be. Working kept the mind occupied. He enjoyed those moments, heavy equipment slung on his shoulder, walking the topmost heights, feeling the chill, liquid breeze freeze against his face more than any in his life. He felt at home. One day, she came by.

He liked to watch the people walking by the building as he ate lunch. Like ants or large dogs, depending on his height at the moment. He felt a kinship with them at moments of such a distance that he was incapable of up close. He never saw people he knew. They did not know what he did; he did not want them to know. But she came.

At first, it was like a dream, he thought he was seeing a person he had met in a vague dream world, not quite real. So, he did not trust his eyes and ignored her. But there she stood, all afternoon long, looking curiously up at him as he worked. He walked past her on his way home. She followed him, catching up quickly.

Just as she was about to catch him, he turned. "What do you want?"

She was caught off guard by his sudden statement. It was not really a question. He didn't want to know anything. He wanted to be left alone. The look of shock and hurt on her face softened something within him. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just not in the mood for anything today."

Her nod was barely perceptible. He looked at her a second then turned to walk away. He walked four paces onward and as he had somehow expected, felt her come along side him. He glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes, then sighed and stopped. In a tired tone he asked, "What is it?"

She brightened. "Oh nothing much. They just said I should see you again. They said it had been long enough and that you would hopefully not be too angry. You aren't too angry, are you?"

"No."

"I'm glad. They said you wouldn't be. And now I -"

"How did you find me?" he asked, quizzical.

"How did I what?"

"How did you find me? I moved. I changed jobs. I'm on another side of town." he said evenly, waving his arm around in a light arc.

"Oh, that! It was easy! No, I didn't follow you," she said quickly at the look on his face, "They knew, of course. They always do. They are awfully fond of you, I think, though they don't say so. They don't say a lot, you know, just what needs to be said. That one told me that, very smart. It made a lot of sense."

"Wait, wait, wait. Could you clarify for me? Who are 'they?' Do I know 'them?' How do you? What has this got to do with me? With you? Who are you, really?" this string of questions fell from him, although he had never meant it to. He wanted to walk away and forget her, but somehow he could not. There was something odd and familiar about her that he couldn't quite pinpoint.

"What do you believe happens to you when you die?" she asked, straight-faced and suddenly very serious.

Harry noticed how very alone the two of them were. They had walked several blocks without seeing them pass. They had entered a quiet square, bereft of traffic or passersby. The light evening fog settling on the city only served to unnerve him a little more. "What?" he asked, though he had heard the question clearly.

"Where does the soul go? What becomes of that person?" she asked with no hesitancy and a growing forcefulness, approaching earnestness.

Harry paused and looked at her; her eyes reflected the floating mist to his left that curled and frothed like a wave. He felt a shudder run through him, though it might have been the wind.

"Err...well, I suppose they go on...to some place...well...where they are together, away from us, of course..." he rambled, recalling thinly the words a ghost had once told him about death. He didn't know what to believe. The closest he had ever come to seeing the dead were through a mirror and an after-image produced by a spell. You could not bring back the dead. Death was an end here, "the start of the next great adventure..." someone had told him.

She looked at him with pity. "You have lost someone dear, haven't you? And not just one, I can tell. I am sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry about?" he asked, relieved to feel that rise in anger.

"Nothing, nothing. I just want you to know I...I understand." She said it in such a calm, soft manner that Harry grumpily had to accept her sincerity.

"Forget it."

"I have lost people too. I think people who die leave something of themselves in everyone they knew. That way, in the end of time, everyone will be together in that last person to ever live." she said with sadness in her voice, but strength and conviction.

"I don't think that's how it works."

"But you don't know, not for sure. You haven't died, so you can't know," she said, her voice rising for the first time, desperation licking at the edges of her consciousness.

"Alright, alright," he said, "I don't know. No one really knows. Not as such. It's all just guesses and conjecture. But I'd like to think that I will see them. Don't you? A collective soul seems a dismal proposition to me."

"Dismal? No...it has a sad beauty to it, like death."

"What about those who have no one to leave their soul with? What of the forgotten dead? What of those who lose their souls while on earth? Who forget all that they knew and dismiss it as nonsense? What of their souls? Where do they dwell?" Harry said with a touch of bitterness that started to choke up his throat.

"Well," she said in a voice without conviction, without pre-thought, "I suppose those souls, once abandoned, stay with those that knew them with it, and whatever new soul they take up, follows them on their new path. That would make the most sense to me."

Harry said nothing. The pain had returned; he felt it, that emptiness, that sense of nothing. That cold. Cold? That darkness that was all consuming. Huh? Where did the world go? Harry could see very little. The streetlights were extinguished; the clouded sky prevented much less light than usual, but something deeper was setting in. He could feel it. Then, he knew.

Turning, he looked down an alleyway and saw them. Glancing to his side, he saw her looking at him, fear in her eyes, panic. "What is it? Why is it so dark? Where am I? We're so alone here. What is going on?" He shushed her and turned back toward the alley. "Stay still."

With a whip, he had his wand in hand and arched it over toward the figures coming. It had been a long time. The swirling cloaks of darkness floated ever closer, the rasping breaths came in audible over the near emptiness of the audible plane. He was angry, but he needed to feel happiness. He could not, he knew. He had to try.

"Expecto Patronum," he said in command, thinking desperately, searching for happiness. Nothing happened. He felt the figure next to him step away in some trepidation. Apparently his change in attitude and direction scared her more than the change in light. His anxiousness showed in his voice when he again said, "Expecto Patronum." Again, nothing happened.

"Harry..." the voice at his side said. It was not scared, it was pleading.

Harry's mind whirred, running along all his old sources of happiness when conjuring, the feeling of flight, the faces of friends (just calling on old demons of pain), and on. He had nothing and he knew it. What made him happy? Nothing, one voice said. You have nothing and are nothing. Nothing? Another said. Balderdash. You have a friend just there. She wants to be, at least, if you let her. He liked the sound of this latter. He clung to that thought. A friend, un-judging, unknowing of all he had had and lost.

His heart lightened. "_Expecto Patronum_," he whispered, a charging stag erupted. It looked at him, as if happy to see him once more; it had been years. He urged it, and it leapt forward, taking out the several Dementors mere yards away. The world lightened, and the cold dissipated. The stag raised its head toward him. It vanished.

Jan looked at him. He looked back. They said nothing


	3. Chapter 2: A Spot of Coffee

He did not see Jan for several days. They had parted well enough, though her face seemed a little confused and disturbed. She had not asked him to explain and he had not offered. It felt weird to him. He had rather assumed she had an attachment with the magical world. Her seeming misunderstanding did not gel with that.

It left him in a sense of unease. At first, he didn't think about it. He should have. In that first instant, he should have done something, said something or perhaps altered her memory, something. It was like a block on his common sense, an inhibitor on his reason clouded his mind and he did nothing. He could care less about the Ministry and their damn decrees. They could not touch him, not really. If they found him, they would fawn over him like the rest. They loved to have a poster boy. They would clean slate him, if they knew. However, it wasn't even that.

A wizard found out is a wizard in peril. Abnormalities draw attention, and Muggles can get very curious, sometimes. At first, he was in shock, and then he grew angry, at himself, at the young woman, at himself, at the world. He just could not understand what had brought him to act so foolishly. Then, he felt desperate. He willed her to show up, to reappear. He had to know, had to reaffirm his safety, to calm her fears, to silence them. It was a sense of desperate fear. Without realizing it, he had begun to experience more emotions than in the past few years. He felt terrible, but slowly began to see, that he felt alive, felt some joyousness.

He began to watch, with anxious urgency, for her to appear at his work, on the way home, on side roads, in alleyways. He had not been so impatient to see someone in years. He kept an eye on the ground so much that he had begun to get sloppy in his work. He nearly bolted a hand to a girder, and luckily, no one saw this as his reactive magic might have drawn some suspicion. He tried to be more careful afterwards.

Then, one day, she was there. Her dress was a canary yellow, seeming of higher quality than he had seen before, but perhaps it was distance blur. He rushed down to her at lunchtime nearly knocking a few coworkers aside. They gaped at his manic motion. They had never seen him leave at lunch, nor move anywhere but in that solid, steady pace he had kept.

On closer inspection, he saw that her dress was of tattered cloth and seemed a blend of vibrant colors, red to gold. He was taken aback. She had the look of a ruffled phoenix. Her face had a mix of emotions. Some part concern and some part uncertainty, but she seemed in a good mood and relatively happy to see him.

Harry smiled; his visage belied his worry. She smiled. Both knew the other had had much to worry about and ponder. He took her arm and led her off. They needed to have a nice chat.

At a small corner cafe, overlooking the Thames, Harry and Jan sat quietly. So far, neither had said much, just generalities, while he ate his soup and she her sandwich. Her eyes glazed over as she watched a small boat put by, Harry's eyes drifted amid the buildings over her left shoulder. As one, they arrested each other's attention. The meal was done, the coffee was out; it was time to talk. Harry whispered a quick word so no one could overhear the conversation.

"What did you do there? What was that?" she asked, looking him dead in the eyes with her creamy brown irises.

"I don't want anyone to hear us," he said, wearily. "Look. Let's not beat around the bush. I...I...well, let's just say, I'm not exactly normal. That should be evident."

She did not say anything. Her attention had locked upon him. She gave no reaction, no sarcastic comment, nothing. He appreciated that and hated it simultaneously.

"There are forces in this world which most do not see, would not understand, cannot understand. Those of us who can manipulate these forces do our best to hide it, to conceal it from the majority. It would be dangerous for all men to know about us. It would be hazardous, not only for us, but for everyone. If you look at the course of human history, any power that has arisen has been exploited," he said with a calm repetitive feel, as though well rehearsed, "Most of the time we do not let anyone see or remember anything of this nature. I...I messed up. I had to do what I did that night, but I should not have let you leave...I was confused. I..."

He broke off. He did not know exactly what he wanted to say.

"You could not make me forget it?" she finished. "Or you didn't want me to?"

He stared. She had read him through and through. Even he had not thoroughly realized it. It worried him a little. "But, you realize, people cannot know. And that is why I should have...but...I...didn't," he ended lamely.

"Why?" she smiled, a bit of scarlet lit her cheeks.

"I don't know. I guess I feel I can trust you. You seem to understand and care and I just...I just want someone to...I guess." He turned a little red with embarrassment, too. "It has been sometime..."

She smiled, "Your secret is safe with me. No one would believe me anyway. Look at me! Do you think if I walked up to you and said something you would believe it?" she said, clearly enjoying his confusion. "You don't have to answer that. I know. You didn't believe me about them, you probably still don't. They are real. They did send me to you."

"Who are they?" he asked, "You never told me before."

Jan's smile remained, but her eyes darted to the side, conspiratorially. "I don't think they want me to tell you, but I can show you someday, if you want."

He looked back in a bemused sort of way. "Ok, someday." He felt better. He felt a relief that began to show on his face. For some reason, a reason he could not explain and she had not inquired about, he trusted her. He trusted no one. He did not trust himself. It felt strange. He liked it.

They finished their coffee in near silence; he enjoyed the soft tickle of its warm steam and the look of the curling steam from her cup. It was an enjoyable lunch, overall.

As they walked off, heading back to his worksite, she asked the pressing question, "Those you lost, the people you cared for, were they also special, like you? Did they die by that power you share?"

He looked at her, face crestfallen for the first time in the afternoon. "Yes. However, they didn't all die. There are things much worse than death," he heard himself repeating. It was true. He knew that now.

She looked concerned. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she looked into his eye. "I know. I have seen it, too. I have known that pain." He felt comforted. They walked on in silence.


	4. Chapter 3: Awake

The bus trundled along, driven by a steely-eyed old bat. It passed rows of people, hundreds of parked cars, weaving through streets with bare inches to spare. Lives whooshed by, death-defying stunts pulled off with absurd ease. No one seemed to notice. The air and mood within the bus was that of boredom. People read the paper, caught up on their latest novel, or worked on their laptops. No one paid attention to the road. It didn't matter. It was taken care of, taken for granted.

The sunrise was slipping rapidly upward, the papers and novels slid in time, adjusting to catch the right lighting. A jerk as the bus dove between two cars, cutting across lanes and into hard angle turns, did little more than jostle the comfortably composed and sleeping alike.

The first destination was coming up, the first stop just ahead. A silver blur. Time stopped. No one noticed, no one saw. The driver's eyes were wide and then shut. The wheel turned hard and fast. A bird fluttered quickly, only it seemed to change time and space, to move faster than the event. Passersby ducked or flinched at the instant. One passenger looked up, noticing an unusual revolution in the bus's path. An eye saw the world in its frozen frame. No more than a few feet away was that silver blur, covering the distance even in halted time. It was inevitable; there was nothing to do. It was over.

He could feel the crunch of falling bodies upon him, the pain of steel tearing his side, the flutter of a lost book floating, weightless past his face, the shards of glass flying from all sides. Then he saw them, the passengers. Before, they had appeared a sea of nobodies, the average people one would see on any bus, but not this group. Before him, he saw five incredibly familiar faces, torn and singed by the event unfolding around them. Then Harry woke up.

Gasp. He felt like he had been holding his breath. Dreams. Nightmares. It had been so many years. So many lifetimes ago, it seemed. He had not experienced something this lifelike since - since before. It hurt. He had seen them, his friends. For a moment, as they were tossed by the crushing crash, it had seemed as though he saw their eyes, those friendly happy eyes, once more, pleading for his help, for his presence.

Then, they were gone. He only saw the lifeless, unwelcoming glare he had seen in them the last time he saw them. He broke into a stream of tears. He could not live like this. It was all too real, once more. He had to get out. He could not remain in the dark, in the perfectly unlighted canvas of his room, mind open and receptive to projecting images of uncaring eyes, fierce chins against him upon his dresser and uncovered walls. He slipped on a jacket and went for a walk.

It was chill out. The air seemed heavy, as it only can mere hours from dawn. The darkness was complete, but for the artificial lamp above the stairwell. He jogged the short flight onto the sidewalk below. Wind whistled shrilly through unseen cracks and nooks all throughout the city. The courtyard he entered seemed a fusion reactor, taking the varying speed of wind and cold and blasting it every direction in some unknown order of chaos. The wind exiting felt a thousand times more biting and hard than that entering.

He passed from street to street, from corner to corner, wandering without purpose, wandering without direction. As he crossed a high-walled section of street, he felt a tingling, a twinge of some instinctual chill that went beyond the flesh, beyond the physical feelings he was experiencing. He knew. He saw. It was here. Yes, just there, there is a skid mark, too! Just there! Is that a bit of glass? No, it's just icy buildup. This can't be the place. It was a dream, or was it?

He had seen events in dreams that had happened before. He had. They had rarely led to anything good, but was this the same? He had probably seen this block a thousand times. He had thought a lot about his friends of late. That had to be it. His mind had mapped the whole thing out. He felt foolish, foolish and cold. However, that feeling, that instinctual twinge lingered. He shook his head.

"Nothing, it's nothing." He walked home.

Harry saw Jan infrequently in the next few weeks. He had changed jobs; the steel girders on that one building had come together and he had joined another crew starting up another one. This was nothing more than a hole, an empty place where a landmark would one day be. A child would see it and say to itself, what an ageless thing! It is older than I am and seems to have always been. Harry saw what it was before. He was part of its creation. He was part of it. They all were.

In the meantime, when he had it, he looked into any news from the world around. The appearance of dementors, even at random, had caught him off guard. After the war, they tended to dwell in the sewers, happy to absorb a little life from those above as they passed by. People would cross the street with a grin and a song in their heart and return with a sullen outlook and have no idea why.

As there was no way to destroy a dementor and the Ministry of Magic could not think of returning them to Azkaban, this was the only thing they could have done. Spells were set on the sewer caps. Muggles attempting to enter the tunnels would suddenly feel ill and be unable to continue downward. Wizards comprised the new team of sewer experts who took care of the system. Arthur Weasley had founded the new department with pride. Harry cringed at the thought of happy, flighty Arthur. He could still see his crestfallen face at the news of his daughter and son. He could never see any of them in his mind without that resultant pain.

How, though, had they come up? It bothered him enough to break his contact with the world enough to get the paper, The Daily Prophet. An owl delivered it daily and he deposited his Knuts. No one knew his location, not really. He also picked up a few Muggle papers to catch up on what was going in that arena. He recalled, with sad fondness, Dumbledore's perpetual habit of it.

One day, as he tossed the London Daily aside, he caught a sight on a ruffled up page that appeared. It drew his eye for some reason. It was the face of a very wizened old businessman. He reminded Harry of great wisdom, like a painting representation of what is wise and knowledgeable. Then the caption caught his eye. "Mr. Arnold Prathit, III dies, suffered terminal damage from bus crash last month."

Like lightning, he saw, as if his mind was forced to bear up evidence against him, a flash and a white, furrowed head aside Harry on the bus. He had a thatched old briefcase nestled between his legs, a pipe caught lightly between his molars, and a paper thrust out a fair distance from his bespectacled face. Then, it was gone. Harry stood, confused and uncertain. Something was wrong. Something was not sound.

He had work in two hours. There was time. With a whirl he disappeared, and reappeared in a dark alley a block out from an old, tall newspaper building.

He had to know. These stones would tell him, not the people inside, the stones. He could feel the answer lying bare yards before him, begging to speak to him. He wanted it clear. He wanted to know whether his dream was just that or some nightmarish reality. What could it mean? Perhaps he did not really want to know. However, he would.

He would.


	5. Chapter 4: The Request

A hand pulled him around as he stepped toward the portal. "Mr. Potter, might I have a word?" Harry did not recognize the face, at first. It was old where it ought to be wizened, strained where it ought to be calm. Everything about that face spoke of pain and a certain hardening. Harry disliked it, instinctively. And the fact that this unknown man knew his name only spoke poorly of him to Harry. He had to be a wizard. No Muggles knew him by that name. At work, he was known as Harry Felt, he got a kick out of it the first time he said it, but it grew on him.

"Who are -" but the last word caught in his throat. The look the man had begun to give him reminded him of an angry, old Minister of Magic from so many years before.

"Fudge?"

"Indeed. It is I. You are perceptive where one would have thought you'd be forgetful." said Cornelius Fudge, shamed and ex-Minister of Magic. He had disappeared from the public life about the time of Voldemort's fall. Harry could tell he was being unbecomingly nice to him. He frowned. "Harry, do let's let bygones be bygones. It was so long ago, and I took my office too seriously; you know that as well as I. I'm a changed wizard. Really I am."

Harry inclined his head slowly, showing an understanding of the words if not an acceptance. "What do you want, Fudge?" he said, foregoing the courtesy of a mister or the casual feel of his first name.

Fudge noticed and moved a bit flustered, reminiscent of the old days, dragging Harry off the path, to seat him on a rotting box of some ungodly smelling something. Fudge did not seem to sense the distaste in Harry's face at the choice meeting place. He spoke, "Now, as I know you haven't been following the wizarding world a lot of late, you'll forgive a quick summary."

He went on without a glance at Harry. He spoke as by rote, as if he were recording this for a phone message, wooden and stiff. "The dementors have been kept at bay, held beneath the sewers of London. They were thought to be but a bi-monthly annoyance now, as our crews only ran into them on occasion and were always accompanied by a strong crew of Magical Enforcement Officers for protection. It seemed like a workable deal. But they, of late, have taken to wandering. We don't know how."

"I know all this, Fudge. I fought a few off a few weeks back on the city streets," Harry said, boredom prevalent in his voice. "Get to the point."

"Well," Fudge said quickly, fearful of losing his audience, "I have a lot of pressure on me, as the new Head of Department for the Sewage Systems..." He winced unintentionally. Harry fought the urge to laugh. Fudge looked grateful. "...to...to remedy this issue as quickly as possible. Now, now I know you don't like me and don't care for the Ministry especially, but you have a special affinity with Dementors, I'm told. You can handle them despite the many horrors you've faced. Hell, you just admitted to knocking a few out of your way in a manner so casual you'd think it was a game of Quidditch...well...you see where I'm going."

Harry looked at him with a funny sort of stare. "Wait, wait, what exactly are you asking? Do you expect me to join your little squad to protect and to serve? If so you can forget it, go hang yourself on that."

"Now, Harry, I know this may be a hard time for you, especially after..." he trailed off vaguely, "But...but...you know we could use you. You don't need to be in our little group, but we have suspected there might be dark magic involved, dark wizards unknown letting the dementors out. Now wouldn't that be a nice little diversion from your present...er...situation and keep your mind off...things," he said this last with a weight on random words, as if to give importance to things that clearly lacked it or to disguise his meaning and keep the point on Harry's mind.

Harry felt a heat growing in him. He felt the urge to demand of Fudge what his situation was and what he would be having a hard time with. Although it would hurt him, he would feel vindictive victory at the embarrassment this little man would feel. "Got a Dark Wizard messing things up again, eh? I don't know; maybe you should go interfere at Hogwarts and burn lies into students' hands. Maybe that will make them go away!"

Fudge did not move. He looked tense as though expecting a change of heart, anything. Harry glared and walked away, not even granting a form of goodbye to pass between them. They did not need it. Fudge sat, hat in hand on the garbage. Flies began to buzz around him, not knowing his presence for the stillness or perhaps knowing. After a time, he stood, warily, and disappeared into the late morning haze.

The paper's morgue was unlike anything Harry had ever pictured. It had a cold, impartial deafness to the cries that resounded within. Stories of war and horrors from around the world, stories of floods, and of human hunger and suffering, all held neatly clamped in cold steel filing cabinets. He had expected a cluttered mess, a man in a ragged outfit who hated his job with a cigarette between his fingers and flicking ashes on the loose piles of papers not filed. It was nothing of the sort. It was cleaner than any Muggle hospital Harry had ever seen.

The woman in charge, a brisk, stern-faced individual, was very possessive of her archives. She wore gloves when handling anything, even the pen to take notes on incoming requests. She changed them religiously. She reminded Harry of Madam Pince, of Hogwarts, so very much picky and likely to scold or shoo off students who seemed about to break the Library rules. It would have been funny, had he not been her sole attention.

She simply could not understand why a professional construction worker was interested in checking an article from a paper that was on the stand a week or two previously. "Why would you be interested in a random bus crash? You weren't in it, were you?" she asked with a look of piercing scrutiny, as if his wounds would suddenly appear and bleed upon her precious papers.

"No, no, no. A friend of mine was, but I was out of town at the time. I wanted to take a copy to his mother. She is so scared for him. She heard about that other that died just yesterday," Harry said in his most convincing voice. He spoke slowly; he figured that would register more with her to fit his character. He had never been great at lying.

Harry never quite knew if she actually believed him. She did concede; however, to make him a copy, granted he did not touch the original nor move from his position. As Harry left with copy in hand, he thought morgue seemed an appropriate title. He had seen bodies more mistreated than  
those damned newspapers.

He hurried back to the work site. He didn't have a chance to look over the copy until the lunch hour. Jan did not come by, so he had plenty of time to run over the article and analyze the pictures to fullest assurance. There was very little to see, really.

"Bus Crash, Claims 2 Lives, 12 Major Injuries"

Early Monday, witnesses say, a bus was forced off the road by a careening silver sports car. It slammed into an adjacent wall and was sent tumbling partway down the south side of the intersection. The silver sports car did not stop and no witnesses could identify the driver or vehicle tags.

"It was such a horrible thing to see," said local lady, Meredith Coleson, animal lover and advocate for the Animal Shelter of London. "I have lived here for thirty years and if I've told 'em once I've told 'em a hundred times, this intersection's just no good."

Other residents of the neighborhood were likewise eager to declaim its problems. Charles Duncan, "I got rear-ended last year just trying to pull up to the light there. I have thought of moving before, and after this, I'm taking my young family far from this dangerous place."

City officials and the transit bus system declined to comment.

Several bodies were carried from the scene, many more in emergency vehicles, but a few managed to limp out of there. Horace Johansen was among them. "I've seen it all. I've survived it all. Some say I have a horseshoe stuck to my back. I just hope the doctors can take care of those other ones. They were in awful bad shape." Horace was seen pulling injured co-passengers from the bus wreckage. He was a true hero, a true friend.

That was all. There was nothing special, nothing significant or poignant. Nothing to indicate anyone in particular was there or that he would know them. Why had he thought they would? The picture was of the empty bus, toppled neatly on its side. The caption read simply, "Bus 23416 in the lawn of Michael Fitzpatrick."


	6. Chapter 5: A Cloud of Black

Harry was flustered and frustrated by this lack of information. Nothing. Witnesses obviously knew nothing important. The paper did its best to protect the names of those involved; the speeding motorist had done the rest. Sagging, Harry went back to work, feeling some unresolved feeling of emptiness. He should feel some relief, nothing had appeared in any Prophet that he could see; nothing had appeared in the paper to indicate anything unusual. It seriously seemed like it was nothing at all. He just didn't know.

He continued to take the papers, more of a habit than for any particular reason. He liked the feel of the crumpled paper in his hands, the feel of the text flowing beneath his gaze. It was comforting; he did not know why.

The eyes of the world had focused on more important matters than the simple troubles of one young man. As much as he minded, he felt that the papers were closed to him. They were for others, the rest. There was nothing really to it but the touch, the texture. It was as if it substituted happily for the skin of another. He could touch the world without contact with it. He was alone but not.

His friendship with Jan continued as it had before. They knew barely anything of each other, but the mere presence of the other was warm. Harry still did not know how she had come into his life, and he almost did not want to know. It was better not knowing sometimes. The truth can be disheartening.

She appeared at odd intervals. He almost expected her before she arrived, but not otherwise. The talks were the same, about nothing and everything. She reminded her vaguely of his old friend Luna Lovegood. Her views were so odd and with a touch of seriousness that lent hilarity. She felt like many things to him. He supposed, in his quiet, contemplative hours, that she represented what he had lost in his long time apart from the world. Life is balance, without it we are nothing.

Her attire was varied and undistinguished. It looked like a ragtag set of dresses grafted in one general model and copied copiously day to day. He never knew what she did for a living, if anything. He never inquired. He barely spoke, sometimes. She usually instigated the conversations and he contributed where appropriate. It was comfortable. They both enjoyed it. Routine was set. Weeks passed, then  
months. He never repeated his inquiries of that first short time. He would know if she wanted him to.

Life happens. Harry had moved through several different jobs and was now in the development of a church on a far edge of the city. It had a monolithic essence, carrying a rib cage as great as a whale's and twice the height. Harry felt it weighing up on him as the sun moved towards the west, as if it towered over his shoulder reading the paper he carried, reading his soul.

On the fourth day after the seventh month following Jan's appearance at his doorway, things changed. In existence, change is inevitable, often it hits with a sudden impact, damaging and painful to behold, but ultimately accepted. Sometimes, it slips in like a dagger, slowly piercing to the heart of all that is and when it makes that knife's twist you suddenly realize the change has come and gone and all is different. Sometimes, it is immediate and powerful, but you don't seem to see it for what it is until later. Harry's was this last.

The day was unseasonably warm, for London. It was a windless day of searing sunlight. Harry felt a cool pleasure as the sweat he built up slid down his back and tickled his spine. Even at this height, above the local buildings setting the structure for the church's steeple, he felt a dead air about him. His glasses would have fogged and been covered in layers of sweat but for a spell he used on days like this. He never came close enough to coworkers for them to notice.

He felt the pain of exertion, the tinge and dip of a growing sense of dehydration. This was living. He could not imagine a greater place to be at that moment. The sky was so light that the crew stayed out late into the evening. At a little after the normal shut down time, Jan appeared on the sidewalk. She walked nonchalantly back and forth, inspecting this shop and that. The other workers had noticed Harry's connection with her and had attempted to speak with her at first. They felt, perhaps, if they understood her, they might understand him. She would not speak with them.

Harry was glad. They left her alone afterwards. Her presence caused nothing more than a chuckle or to and a few knowing winks between friends. It didn't matter.

After a time, she realized they had not quit, and she stood gazing up at them with a look of contented admiration. They did good work. She had seen it across the city. He saw her immediately, but continued his work.

The sun had crested and the blues and purples blotted out the reds and oranges on the horizon. The street below had sunk into darkness from growing shadows. It was slow but perceptible. She waited. Harry heard a tweet and saw the others begin to descend. That was a day. He tossed his gloves into his bin, dropping a few tools therein. He had turned to grab a wrench when it happened.

The sunset had accelerated. It was too fast, it was too complete. He felt a chill and the world below, before full of jostling and laughter of men after a hard day, suddenly stilled and silent. Something was terribly wrong. He looked down. He nearly fell with shock. The ground looked a floating river of black, cloak on cloak, hood on hood, there must have been a hundred dementors flowing by below him.

The men, luckily, had descended quickly and stood at ground level when they arrived. All of them collapsed immediately. A fall from the heights they were at would have killed dozens of workers. Jan had collapsed without a sound, instantly overwhelmed. Harry stood, towering above the site. Harry began to feel that inward gnawing that Dementors always brought. He began to hear a subtle screaming, crying, the sound of his mother's death at the hands of his old foe, Voldemort. He had not heard it in years.

A tear came to his eye, but he knew he must fight. No Muggle was within sight; it would not have mattered, the power of the dementors was too much for them. With a force of lightning Harry struck. _"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"_He felt as if the sound had not come from him. It echoed, powerful, drawing from that spark of happiness Jan kept alive. It seemed as though the vast rib cage he had been building, the powerful lungs of the church had bellowed it and not he. His wand had a pause and then erupted.

The stag flew, stampeding as Harry had never seen it. It charged into their midst and dementors flew into each other, into walls, into alleyways. A silver bullet had struck the heart of blackness and scattered that blackness to the far walls, into the shadows, and out of sight. It lasted only a few moments. Then, the sky cleared, and Harry stood, atop the momentous peak with a swooping feeling of triumph and glorious perfection. He felt one with that great structure, an addition that had no end.

A man, strong and burly, awoke and saw, before passing out again, an image at the pinnacle of the steeple. It seemed a figure of surpassing grandeur surveying all below. The Heavens themselves had opened up to send this angel upon its height, an angel of compassion and strength. He never felt so full of spirit and belief. Then he was out.

Harry surveyed the damage. The men were unconscious. A few pedestrians had taken a rough turn from it and were lying, shaking off to the side. He descended quickly to check on all of them. They seemed fine, just ill. He found some chocolate in a bag by the entrance. He fed some to each of them, patting them on the back. They could not retain consciousness long. Fourteen pops suddenly sounded in the square. A cadre of wizards had Apparated on the scene.

At their head was Cornelius Fudge. He was more flustered than Harry had ever seen him. He bounced as on springs from one man to another, relieved, at last, to announce they were all fine. Then he saw Harry. He stopped. Then, turned to the others, he gave brief and harsh orders. Their memories were to be modified, health assured. Someone had to find the direction the dementors had fled. They had little time.

Harry watched, bemused at their confusion. He was the only one who had seen the dementors leave. No one asked him a thing. They avoided looking at him. Then, he remembered, Jan. He looked, as if on a swivel, over to where he had seen her standing. The bench was empty and the ground was bare. He ran, as a man obsessed, from one to the next of the victims. She was not among them. Swinging around, he looked to Fudge, who had stared curiously at his furious movement. "She's not here!" Harry voiced, "Where...?" He left the last unfinished.

"Have you lost someone, Mr. Potter?" Cornelius asked, his voice almost cheerful, in its bitterness. "It does happen, I suppose. Dementors do rather like to keep humans around to feed off; we all know that. Best of luck in your search, Harry."

He turned, expectantly. Harry was torn. He hated that man before him. He hated him as he had hated the world, himself. He had no choice. "Fudge, I need to find her," he began. "I feel responsible. Where are they? Where do they go to?"

Fudge turned, a very fake and uninspired look of surprise on his face. "Oh ho," he whispered. "Not thinking of taking me up on my offer, are we?" He was relishing this. Harry knew it. He did not care.

"Enough gloating, Fudge. Just tell me. I'll do whatever you need. Forget the formalities. I don't need a team. Just tell me where to go!" his voice elevated as he spoke, leading towards the scream that had his insides frozen.

"Of course, of course, Potter. Speak with Gideon here, he has the details," Fudge said in that confident offhandedness he had waved about as Minister. "Oh, and do feel free to report back to me if you should find anything of use to me, won't you?" He stalked off with a twisted smile on his face. This catastrophe was moving his way, at last. He had best report this to the Minister; he had demanded to hear any updates.

Twelve minutes later, Harry reappeared near a manhole cover near the center of town. He held a map as he reached to open the cover. This would be a dangerous journey, but he had to make it. He had to. For Jan, for himself. He had to. He lifted the lid with care, set it upon the ground, and pulled it over himself as he lowered himself into the blackness beneath the city. It was time for him to find his friend.


	7. Chapter 6: Deep, Deep Below

_"Lumos."_ The darkness parted. A narrow beam fled before him, but he could feel, as something inevitable the encroaching of the empty blackness from all sides. It seemed to breathe and live. It waited. Any falter and it would flood over him and in so engulfing him own him. He would be one with the darkness, the ecstasy of emptiness. He shuddered. He did not realize why. He just felt it at his core.

The tunnel surface was of a brick inlay. It seemed ancient, older than the gods did; timeless, frozen in its ancient state for all eternity. It seemed clean but for the continual river of liquid at its center, greater and smaller precisely at the tunnel he had arrived at. His steps pounded unmercifully loud in his ears, echoing shortly back from the edges of the light beam. He was a bodiless entity creeping with the darkness, approaching the light but never quite in it.

No other sound fell upon his ears. He only heard drips when they entered his field of vision, this bare tunnel of light contained all that was and could be. Nothing else mattered or was. He was where he was born to be at that moment. His mind knew that this was and that he had reached the place where truth truly lay. The darkness hides all truth, all reality. Light shows too much when unleashed. It convinces the world that all is true and beautiful. Only with surgical handling of light is truth found amid the darkness. The dark is all lies, but the truth can be made to shine through.

'No sign of Jan. No sign of dementors,' Harry's voice spoke in the back of his mind. It sounded aloud, almost. He could almost hear echoes of his thoughts through the dense-moss covered tunnel walls. Those thoughts had more substance than the very walls he could feel mere feet on either side of his body. He contemplated the words of Fudge. Why did he need Harry here? What was he meant to face? He had mentioned a possible new Dark Lord, a new threat. Why Harry? The Aurors did this for a living. Harry had given that dream up long ago. Yet, he had defeated Voldemort, hadn't he? Hadn't he?

Harry paused, almost as though a sound had penetrated his shell, like voices rising in one's consciousness and fading at some deep down filter for noise. He could have laughed. His mind had the strangest thoughts sometimes. Say there was a new Dark Lord behind all of this. Say that was the thing. He might have taken Jan to draw Harry down here. It had happened before. Voldemort knew him well, intimately like no other. They had a touch of thought shared and mind connected.

His heroic sense of duty was well known and documented. Hadn't the Prophet done a lovely story just after Voldemort fell about the heroic his self-sacrifice? He could still see Mrs. Weasley cooing over him about it. They hadn't realized the permanence of the conditions of his friends at that point. They still had had hope. He felt sick, sick and alone. He had to go on. His only chance of contact with any other  
person lay ahead. He had to know. He had to go. He had to help.

He came to a few passages that were impassible. They had appeared right, felt right. His directions seemed to indicate that was correct. When he backed out, he said, "Point me!" and his wand would point. He found that his way was now the other. He had felt so certain before, but that certainty faded and he followed the wand, blindly. Whatever force was directing him seemed to know what it was doing. He continued.

Time was nothing. He would never know how long he walked that tunnel system. It could have been a mile or a million. He never saw a thing. There was no swish of cloak, no rasping breathing, no cold. In fact, he felt, it was unusually warm, almost a comforting, soft, gentle temperature and mood throughout, like coming home. Harry could not imagine home being further from a place like this. Home is a place of hope and calm, not of anxiety and darkness tension.

The tunnels, despite what might seem normal, had the seeming effect of a downward slope. Everything felt deeper and darker than that which preceded it. He felt his legs trudge precipitously on a cliff edge, sliding slowly into its crater-like mouth. He felt off balance, alone and toppling into the nothing.

He became aware, after the first eternity of walking, that he was not truly alone. There were others, the encroaching black seemed filled with silent, unseen watchers. A billion eyes, always on him. He was  
seen but could not see. He was surrounded by nothing and everything. He felt an overwhelming sense of hopelessness sink in. How could he overcome that which he could not see, hear, touch, or sense? He just knew they were there. The emptiness filled with a deeper emptiness. He was more alone than before.

His nerves began to rack. He felt a violent urge to turn back. Voices seemed to echo at him, "She is not here." "Leave now!" "You do not belong here!" "Go where the light is, a sensible lie is still sensible." "You will find nothing ahead." "You cannot comprehend, back down." "Fool...be gone!" He squeezed his eyes and forced thoughts through, like cleaning a drain, he had to clear out the senseless droning and that buzzing that had begun to become interminable. He needed a single purpose, but there wasn't one. There were two.

"Harry," a voice said calmly from before him. He stood in what he believed to be a large chamber. He could not remember entering it and did not recognize any of the brick-types he saw about. This was  
completely different from the tunnels he had just been in, but they were still tunnels, just blood red in construction, faded and jaded with age and care.

He jerked his wand forward, left, right, up, down, all around. He saw no one there. He waited; eyes and body tense.

"Harry."

"Who's there?" he asked as he jerked his wand at the sound source. Nothing. This room, he realized from his own voice, was an echo chamber. No source was quite what it seemed. The voice could be from a thousand places in and out of this nestled place.

"That's better. You can't avoid all the sounds that seem to come from your own mind, can you? I do love this place, don't you? It has a certain peaceful presence, a sense of power and ownership. You feel it though you deny that to yourself, don't you? Interesting. After all this time, you haven't changed."

Harry felt something odd. The buzzing from before had returned and seemed to shake up his world a little. He shook his head and tried to beat that out. He continually scanned the walls and quickly jerked to a random place, hoping to catch his confronter off guard.

"Really. You could at least get angry and yell that you don't believe in ghosties and ghoulies and keep walking. Couldn't you? I believe you still think you can...haha...how quaint."

The voice reminded him of something from some past. He couldn't quite place it. It felt like a filtered cream, altered just near the point of recognition. However, who was it? For some reason he couldn't even tell the gender by the voice. It was just there, empty, senseless, generic. It almost reminded him of that monotonous emptiness one can hear in self-thought when reading something incredibly dull and unmoving. He nearly laughed.

The voice did. "Very good, Harry. We're making progress. Laugh at me, if you will.

Harry spoke, "Who are you? Why are you here? Where is Jan?" His primary purpose was still there. He felt comforted at the memory. He felt clean and good.

"Feeling noble, are we? You should know better than that. Jan can wait. You only care as much as you can, don't you? You did surprise me some. Getting you here was particularly easy. After your friends...well, I thought it would be impossible for you to care enough to be lured. I was wrong. Bravo, I thank you."

Harry repeated, "Where is Jan?" with a more earnest and immediate sensitivity.

"Now, now, leave the trivialities aside. You know that isn't the true reason you're here. Leave the victims aside for a second. It's all about you, isn't it? How you feel, how she has made you feel? Your  
first questions were more poignant. You'd best prance back over and ask those."

"Listen, whoever you are, I came after Jan. I will take her from here, whether in ease or by force." Harry's wand rose perceptibly, threateningly. "I had no other reason to be in this god-forsaken sewer and you know that well enough."

"Tut tut, such violence. I'm afraid you have reverted somewhat. We'll have to work on that. Please, lower the wand. I am not armed. I simply must speak with you."

Harry's wand remained steady. 'He's trying to trick me. What is this nonsense he's spouting? What does he want?'

"Ah, that surely is the question of the hour! What do any of us want? You certainly want things; that's why you're here. You have to see if your motive is worth the while. If not, leave. Go home, young man and bother me no more."

"I'm here for Jan," Harry said. His voice, self-justifying in its angry retort, scared himself in retrospect.

"Good, you're starting to see. It sounds silly if you repeat it just. so much. Say it again. Go on. Get it out. Then we can get on. Come, come now, say it," said the voice, now oily smooth with anticipation.

Harry said nothing. He thought nothing. He was nothing.

"Haha...silent treatment? Won't work. I know. Your silence speaks volumes. Hopefully we can move on then." The voice paused for a moment. "Good. Now, your greatest strength and weakness is your heroism, correct? Come, you can admit it. Everyone knows that. You are noble and are drawn into traps like this but you get out and are praised for it. You say you hate it. You say it is nothing but blather of others. Secretly, you relish it. You love it. You live for it."

Harry wanted to shout. He wanted to deny these base accusations, curse the speaker into oblivion. He wanted to hurt anyone around him. It wasn't true. Sure, praise always was nice, but he didn't go out there to get praise. He hadn't faced Voldemort for glory. His friends knew...had known...that...

"Your friends? You're always on about them, aren't you? You really don't know how to dump your guilty feelings," it said. "Oh yes," Harry could almost see the smirk, "you feel guilty. You blame yourself. You almost wish they were dead. You DO wish it, sometimes. What a callous thing. What a selfish thing. That's how you came to stand here, is it not?"

Harry shut off his receiving ears. He would not listen. He would not hear these lies. It was bull. He had loved his friends. He knew the pain was not only his. It was those around him. It was his friends' families' pain. They knew, as he knew, that their dear one was gone forever. It was crueler to them than to him. He had known that. He had understood, felt their pain. That's why he couldn't stay. He was such  
a reminder, right?

"Hahaha," laughed the being, "You really are a piece of work. You know that is a lie. You can convince yourself of anything if you work hard enough, I've heard. Now that I have spread the seed of truth, let us unlock a little more truth. However, to do so, I shall have to allow a little more light. Please don't mind."

A moment passed. The quiet was unendurable. Harry was not sure he wanted to see. He felt a turmoil growing in his mind. He hated that feeling. He hated the one who had brought it. He hated the world. He hated himself. He knew he had felt some of these things, but had known it and reprimanded himself then. Yes, he had reprimanded himself. He was right in how he felt. He was human. People who love have some weaknesses. They are excusable, are they not? Who can deny that?

He heard the laugh again, and then the voice, "You begin to observe but not to see. Soon, soon you shall." Then, _"Lumos Aeternum!"_ All was in light. All was gone.


	8. Chapter 7: Passage

Harry was blind. He could see nothing but a blank whiteness consuming all before him. Carte blanche, something inside whispered. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a figure on the far side of the room. It was indistinguishable but for the uneven shadows falling from that wall.

The light was terrible and perfect. It was like sunlight on an early summer's day, pure and white. It had none of the failures of fluorescence and iridescence that one usually feels indoors. Harry felt as if he had just stepped from a darkened hallway into the out-of-doors. The light seemed to pulsate with an unnatural aura.

His eyes seemed to open and close in excessively slow motion, capturing blurred snapshots in the interim. He rubbed them quickly with one dirty-as-sin hand from the construction site. He blinked. The  
world came back into focus. The light, as he had noticed was of an unusually intense nature. It held aloft above the figure before him with no noticeable support. No wand was extended, no appearance of a summoning or upholding spell in place. It was static.

He raised his wand steadily to point at the image before him. He kept a weary glance on the ball of light, but his attention was fixed solely on her. How? What? It didn't make any sense.

Alone, unshackled and looking serenely across the hall stood Ginny. She recognized him. She had not so much as looked at him in years. He shook his head. He had imagined it. When he looked up, he'd see  
something else, or nothing. Maybe there was a nasty boggart there. If so, what did that mean? He looked up. No change. No change at all.

It wasn't possible. His throat had locked. His anger at the voice, his apprehension at the uncertain situation melted. He felt naked in a sudden light. He could not control his facial features; the shock on them must have seemed blinding. He was exposed in his weakest form. He felt hurt by the very image before him. He could not utter anything.

"Harry?" a soft voice came from her. It sounded natural and as he had remembered, locked as a solid block of memory, but not wooden or forced. It simply was. He felt a tear well in his left eye. It was too much, too good, too...

"Who are you?" he demanded, blood pressure rising.

"Harry, what do you mean?" Ginny asked, her eyes confused, hurt.

"Come off it, who are you, really?"

"You know me, Harry. We were at school together. You remember Hogwarts...you remember Hermione and Ron, right?"

"Yeah, Harry. You remember us, right?" Hermione and Ron spoke with an eerie unity as they came from under an archway to the left of Ginny. Harry felt confusion and a twinge of fear. Something was decidedly not right. Something was quite rotten.

Harry began to back away quickly, wand raised in unspoken defense. He stumbled blindly over a bit of rock he had not seen and kept moving.

"Harry? What's wrong? Why won't you answer us?" Hermione asked, concernedly.

"Harry. Listen mate, you need to calm down. You're acting like a bloody oddball. Just look at yourself." Ron said, with that familiar hint of a laugh in his voice. He sounded like he was desperately holding back feelings of worry with his usual casual jokes.

"No. You're not here. You were in other lives. You don't know me. You fucking don't know me!" Harry screamed this last. He threw hexes at the images, but they never made it. They didn't rebound; they just didn't hit their targets.

"Harry," said Ginny, white with apprehension, "Why are you doing this? Look at me..." she dissolved into sobs.

Harry had nearly made it through the rear portal. Two voices arrested his motion. "Harry, please, listen. They're right. It's all alright." It was Neville and Luna. They, too, looked perfectly normal and seemed all right. They knew him. Harry felt as though something enormous was crashing down upon him. He ached for that terrible voice. It, at least, had seemed right for this place, one with a darkened dimension of hell.

However, perhaps this was hell, having those you want about you but knowing it could not be, could not be right. Neville and Luna had come from behind him. He was surrounded by the figures. None of them had moved towards him since they had entered. They stood at their respective doorways, unmoving, but with highly energized, emotional faces. He could never forget those faces, as they were just then. It was too real, too haunting, too much like life to be real.

He was surrounded by demons, by spirits, by something he couldn't imagine. It was all too real to be fake and thus too fake to be real. He felt a crushing sense of weight bear down upon him. With that, he felt a sense of loss, as if he was losing his friends again. He felt an ache, an emptiness he knew all too well. They were standing all around him, but they weren't...they couldn't be...them.

"Where is that voice?" he asked to the room at large, "the one that preceded you?"

"What voice?" "Where?" "What are you talking about, Harry?" "Don't you want to talk to us?" These responses among many quickly came back to him.

"No, you are hiding it. Perhaps you are part of an illusion, a spell to cloud my thinking or blind me or deceive me," he rambled, stumbling around, struggling to locate a gap in their ranks, an escape. "Whatever it is, it hasn't worked. I see these puppets for what they really are."

"But Harry..." "How could you..." "Quiet! Let me speak to him."

Then, he felt a soft hand, a massaging grip, upon his shoulder. He shuddered, an aching moan growing at the tip of his tongue. NO! He could feel a painful spot widen, as a wound reopened as it had barely begun to heal. He could not delay. He had to. He looked.

Ginny stood bare inches from him, her body erect and calm, her arm supportive and relaxed. She was looking with confidence and uncertainty; she was exactly as he pictured her in his deepest dreams. She seemed nothing less than an angel did. That was what terrified him. Her comfort was too perfect, her caresses, too soft and gentle. She was inhumanly human.

He broke out in a silent sob. These beings could not understand. Their eyes, their movements, everything about them said they could, but they could not. They were nothing. Some illusion, some toxic potion that he had inhaled, some spell upon his mind, some physical embodiment of everything that they were. But not real.

He let the moan escape him. It was the most hideous and demeaning sound a body can unleash. It was instantly pathetic and unpleasant, unwatchable but making one incapable of looking away. Like a sad ballet where everyone fell repeatedly and you hoped the figures would not continue, but knew, and secretly desired, that they would.

The sound evokes within one's own soul the very highest and lowest of emotions, of thoughts. Harry felt it. He could see his pathetic opening. Could see the wound left in his side, and could see that no one was there to witness it. Maybe the voice was still here. That was real. That was life. That was something, right?

However, these for whom this display was imparted felt nothing, saw nothing, were nothing. He felt suddenly cold. His emotions fled. He felt nothing. He could not even feel anger at his situation. He felt nothing. He brushed Ginny off. Her grip protested, but he persisted. She fell away. The others had closed the circle, slightly. They each stood within a few dozen feet of him, in a circle, arching like an orbiting set of satellites, but unmoving.

Harry suddenly felt no need to interact with them. That dead air, the dead emptiness of before felt more lifelike than this group. He looked past them. Through the darkness over Hermione's shoulder stood the doorway he had first seen before him. He felt something just beyond its shadowed edge.

He called, "Come out! Show yourself. I am done with this little game. I see they are but nothing. You know that as well as I. There is nothing to be gained, for either of us by keeping up this charade. Let me see and face you."

"You do not know what you ask. And you are a fool to think there is no purpose in it," laughed the voice from before. Clearly, it had stood back and watched the events unfold. "You entertain me, I must say. I had thought it would take longer for you to feel something was wrong there. But what you feel may not be what you really think you feel."

"Show yourself!" Harry said, anger growing.

"Temper, temper. I will not show myself just yet. You have a choice, a task that involves a choice," the voice said musically, "You may step forward towards seeing me, but I do have a stipulation, or two, you'll find."

"Why should I listen?" Harry asked, pointedly.

"Why indeed? But then, if you had doubted that, you would have left immediately," it said with some relish, "You cannot go, but you are certainly free to. I daresay we shall see each other again. I can't say the same for you and your dear Jan."

Silence for a moment. "Oh, forgotten about her, have we? No matter. You remember your purpose now, don't you? Yes," it added icily. "You will enjoy this, I hope. I know I will."

Harry held still, waiting for the inevitable. He did not know what it was, but could feel the pull, the drive that would push him through whatever came next. It had to be. He could not forestall it. The voice spoke.

"In order to cross this portal, to follow me, you will have to get passed your old friends here. Now, believe what you will of their realism or authenticity, but they are well armed and can protect this door as well as any, better than most, I might add. I have seen to that. While these five stand, while anyone of them stands up, you cannot cross that portal. Try it. I will enjoy the sight."

"In addition, you will quickly discover, they can block any block-able spell you put on them. They will intercept it without a motion; protect their bodies with no offensive maneuver. In effect, it is the perfect stalemate. Nevertheless, you can and will pass through this portal. You know that. I know you do."

"The question," it continued, "is that of how. It is all very simple if you recall what you have thought to yourself a dozen times if you have thought it once, 'They are nothing.'" It laughed. "They are nothing. They are nothing to you, and certainly nothing to me. However, I must admit, they were a singular piece of handiwork. Alas, sacrifices must be made, eh?"

Harry said nothing, pondering the words he had heard. "I will take my leave now. You have nothing to fear. They are as nothing. Remember. No block-able spell." The voice departed.

Harry puzzled and thought. His first thought was to run, go back, and never return. That seemed safest. However, that was not like Harry. He could not give in. He could not leave Jan, recalled so poignantly by the voice, to whatever fate lay ahead. He had to act. It was his duty. It was who he was.

So, how was he to go on? He tried a few things. Simply walking forward found blocking spells on the door. Any attempt to unlock or over throw the spells met with nothing. He tried light jinxes and hexes, pushes and tugs. He tried tripping them physically. He tried anything he could but they were always two steps ahead of him. Their agility was uncanny. He should have figured it would be. They were too perfect, almost sickeningly so.

'No block-able spell', repeatedly echoed like a mantra. What could he mean? Moreover, why did he emphasize their nothingness? Harry threw dozens of spells, transforming rocks to distract, conjuring up burrowing creatures, blasting aside walls of rock to reveal no real damage done. It was like an impassable labyrinth consisting of a single wall and five ex-classmates who weren't really his ex-classmates. They said nothing throughout this exchange. Their eyes spoke enough. They were unfeeling and uncaring now that the puppet show had ended. They were nothing.

Their constantly watching eyes, always dull and focused upon him, drove him to some bouts of anger. Why did they have to watch, like judging emotionlessly? Why couldn't they at least put up a visible fight instead of walking around his spells and blocking them without motion? Why were they so confoundedly perfect he couldn't find a way around them?

He wished he could blast their empty shells into oblivion. Then, he had it. It seemed so odd to him. Why would it put me through this? They were not real. Why should this affect him? They were like dolls. One eliminates toys in play to death all the time without fear of impunity or problem. They were nothing but toys. Why this subjected task? Something felt not quite right, but Harry could not pinpoint what it was.

He gathered all the rage he had felt in the last years, all the hatred he had for that malicious voice and for the world that had betrayed and left him empty, all the anger he had against himself for his failure to save his friends and said a simple phrase five times. The way was open. And Avada Kedavra had been the key, all along.

As he had found on entry, so it was when he left. Nothing was there. Nothing had ever been there. Five bodies were there, but were not. Maybe they had been, but maybe they hadn't. It didn't matter. Harry had made it one-step closer in his quest. Jan would be safe soon; he knew it.


	9. Chapter 8: A Chat

It was like stepping into a dream. Harry could see no resemblance in this room to the last one. He found himself in a moderately lit parlor, unfamiliar but comfortable. It reminded him vaguely of the old woman's house he had met Slughorn in; it had that same quality of cluttered ease about it. There were three seats nestled in the corner adjacent a series of packed bookshelves - covered with books and oddments and trinkets of every size and sort amongst them - surrounding an innocuous, hardwood tea table. Tea was set and two of the seats were filled.

One figure, the one to whom his eyes were immediately drawn, was Jan. She sat pristinely and quietly, awaiting something with no fear or doubt, just acceptance. She almost seemed to be enjoying her stay.

The other, whom he saw and gazed with some scrutiny for a moment, was hooded and cloaked, set back in an upright armchair, draped in shadow and laced with darkness. The entire body was hidden from view, from booted feet to jet-black gloves. It was the enigma trapped within a mystery.

The hooded figure must have waited for his attention. It spoke.

"Welcome! Have a seat. We have been waiting for you." The voice was, if that were possible, cheery, cultured, controlled. Harry felt uncomfortable, out of place amid a madness consisting of order.

He remained in the doorway. He could not think of any words. He did not see how he could say anything. It felt unnatural. He had just killed five non-entities, a scar against his sense of rightness; he felt as though he and the world around him ought to be screaming, wailing against such an atrocity. Here he was, in a calm, collected drawing room. He knew those creatures back there were not his friends, were nothing, but everything is something, isn't it? Even if it is nothing, isn't it?

A sense of cultured chaos was all around him. Harry froze. He couldn't conjure a word, gesture, motion, or facial expression. It was perplexing moment, beyond the norm. One expected an enemy to attack, to berate, to taunt, not to invite one casually to tea. No, the tea was surely not poisoned, that seemed too crude, too out of character with this one. Whatever was beneath the hood, whomever, Harry reminded himself; it/he/she was a monster in the truest sense.

Calmness, relaxation and unconcern over advances of one's enemy or opponent...this hooded thing seemed too smart to discount Harry or his abilities. It felt all wrong. Like everything. Harry felt a flush and a rush of distaste, of hate for the tiniest things. That paper was hanging out at a predictable angle slightly smudged a teapot handle; he felt a distinct hatred for it, in particular. It sounded foolish even as he thought it, but there was something unnatural again in the natural state. It was as if someone was trying too hard to maintain.

_Maintain what?_ Harry's mind was a flutter and it made him angrier for the time he spent on it. The figure and Jan both let him stand, musing, in the corner of the room. Neither had reached for a cup of tea. It seemed the niceties were being observed. They must wait for the guest.

Harry's mind drifted back to Jan. How could she so calmly sit there? Why did she seem to consort with this thing, this entity? His world was spinning. The hooded thing was like a cut on an otherwise smooth, unblemished bit of flesh. However, like a cut, the person upon whom it appeared ignored it for the most part. That was it. It felt like an intentional ignorance to save face, to keep the mind away from that deep, hovering phantasm of darkness.

Harry stepped forward, a sudden rush of confidence leading him forward. "Who are you? What are you doing...here? Jan? What is going on?"

"Haha...you really do amuse me, sometimes," the voice laughed, then more seriously, "Please...sit. It is easier this way."

Harry refused without a word. A grimace was his only response. It was confusing. It was foolish. Nothing was right.

"You are beginning to see. I am happy of it. It has taken some effort on my part, but please...I implore you...sit."

Harry hesitated. It seemed he would get nowhere if he did not, but he did not want to expose himself to anything. He glanced, with some scrutiny, around the room. No one stood in the shadows. It appeared, for the moment, that they were alone. He could sense nothing except the three of them. It felt all right, too all right, he added.

With a nod, he stepped forward and sat in a smooth patterned high chair. The eagle claw armrests formed a relaxing cushion against his wrists and upper arms. He kept his wand out, clung tightly in his own-clawed fist, pointed generally towards the mystery. He waited. He did not have to wait long.

"Excellent. You do understand that going back is not and has never been an option," the voice curled, "I applaud your growing clarity.

"But, on to business." It seemed to grow taller and more ominous. "Mr. Potter. You seem to be laboring under a few slight delusions. For one, you have been thinking that I am an enemy. What have I said to give you that idea? Haha...I daresay, I made you work to get here, but you needed it. You needed to take the steps you have taken. It was inevitable."

"You also believe that Jan is somehow conspiring with me, such a quaint word...haha. She is just as clueless as you are, in this instance. Perhaps a little less, but we will get into that shortly. I love that puzzled look in your eye. Perhaps not as much as I love that look of hatred you can conjure when it's called for," it looked knowingly over, "Yes, Potter, like just a moment ago. You really are a special gift. The wizarding world cannot and will not try to comprehend your power. If they had, they would not have let you out."

"They would have killed you outright, even as you descended gloriously from your greatest sacrifice to them. They cannot stand great achievers, like you and me, Harry. People worry about greatness; it scares them, unless it is within them individually. Then, it never is in all of them, is it? You've seen it."

Harry began to see the turn in the conversation. He frowned heartily. He had heard it all by now. He was no fool.

"Of course, you are no fool. Why do you think I waited until now to approach you? I think you are ready. I was worried. You seemed forever trapped in your own self-enclosed prison, apart and happy of it, actually taking pleasure from your separation. It was a devastating thing to see, greatness fall. At least it could be, for the great. You ought to have heard what the wizarding world. Such headlines. Chosen One Chooses Exile. The Boy Who Lived: Where did he go wrong? Haha...such a field day. They love a sensation, a fall, and demise. It is a great boon after the mundane livelihood."

"What greater target than you, Harry?" it asked, ignoring the sour turn in Harry's expression. "Their greatest hero hides from the world, leaves all behind, the fame, the glory, the eternal praise. Think on it. Every one of those suckers would give an arm and a leg for a touch of that. You gave much more, but still you abandon the well-awaited reward. They hate you for it. It gives you pleasure in that same hatred."

"Just as you feel hidden pleasure in your hatred of me. I'm such an easy target for you! I appear like the ultimate evil, like any dark lord you can picture. However, I understand your position more than you can imagine. We are so very much alike, I must say. Haha," it laughed softly and shook its head.

Harry jumped in, "I'm nothing like you! I came here to save Jan from you. You took her away from the surface, from me."

"Haha," laughed moistened black spots that appeared as if they might be the figure's eyes. "Again, your assumptions are so wrong. I did nothing. The dementors are restless. They have been raiding the surface for weeks now. You know; you saw it. I simply saved her from them because it suited me."

"I don't believe that," Harry said, dismissively. "Fudge said he thought -"

"Are you actually going to believe anything that that blundering old fool says?" the amusement in that form was practically physical in nature. "I'm sure he's just grateful to get you to look into his dementor problems. He is so close to losing his last scraps of mental control. His last breakdown has nearly incapacitated him. Stress has its detrimental results, alas. But let's forget Fudge."

Harry took this in and replied, "Why did saving Jan suit you?"

"Ah, perceptive and curious, as you used to be, I am impressed. My methods and timing are as good as ever." Harry waited, eyes locked on that dark mass beneath the hood. Perhaps now all this would come out into the light for what it really was.

"You see," continued the voice, "I had nearly given up hope on you, as I have said before. Such a damaged result of circumstances and unjustified recriminations you had become. What a pity, I thought. Then, Jan stepped in and changed everything. If it felt as a happy twist of fate to you for such a light to enter your life, it was a miracle, a boon, for me."

"Her presence indicated much more than you even know. It was so frightfully ironic, the whole situation. You have no idea. You really do not, but the fates must have turned their attention at last upon the needs of one humble creature, such as me. It is too perfect. Then, I knew I must act."

"Act? Are you referring to taking Jan here? Of going through all this? To tell me what? What is going on here? Why does any of this matter?"

Harry felt his anger growing without a release, without a valve to temper the strength. He felt annoyed, and distrustful. All he had heard seemed sensible but it was conjured by a creature he could not trust. It all felt right and wrong.

"Haha. As I have said, I did not have anything to do with her capture. That was the dementors. What you may recall is a certain dream that appeared to you on a certain eve some weeks past. That was to be my coup d'etat. You saw something that invigorated your already enlivened sense of being, sense of life and touch. I failed. I did not realize that it was all too early. You were not ready to know, thus you did not pursue it enough. You were too willing to dismiss and after a dismissal, a recovery is impossible."

Harry looked up, confused. He had been studying the intricate lines of the floor, trying to ignore the beating of his own heart, as a hammer smashing against an anvil for sparks. His dream? He had not thought on that in some time.

"I can see and feel your confusion. Haha. You have had them before, correct? Dreams that come from another. Those were involuntary. This was intentional. It was easy; your mind had begun to open. And the mind accepts the truth so much more easily than lies," it paused with dramatic effect. "Yes, the truth. Even subconsciously, it seemed relevant. It seemed important, like an event of painstaking power. It was right. You know it is so."

Harry wanted to throw something. It was all a lie. His friends were fine. They didn't even know each other, much less travel together. They were fine but for that separation from reality. He would have heard something. It would have been in the Prophet. They were famous, beloved martyrs; he remembered the last paper he had seen before his self-imposed exile called them.

"Haha! You think because you are the target of ridicule, that your friends would be safe from it. St. Mungo's couldn't find anything wrong with them, not physically. Therefore, the papers began to report, speculate, that, like you, they had fled their deserved limelight. Anything reported on them nowadays would be a minor footnote, not even a reason to break open an old wound with the public."

"Their families grew bitter. Why would they tell you about it if they even could find you? You had shown a hatred for all they were and represented. They could not understand your turn. I understand. We are great. Greatness takes a certain understanding." The laugh grew painful upon Harry's ears. It felt so certain, but he could not believe it. He wanted something, anything to change the subject off it.

"But then, why do you need Jan? You had plenty of other ways of luring me down here, didn't you?" Harry asked, on a sudden inspiration.

"Ah, now we are getting to the delicious part of it all. Please, tell our dear friend, and humor me for a moment, about your little dream. You never brought it up before. I think she will find it rather fascinating."

Jan, who had not spoken or looked in the inclination to speak, leaned forward, slightly. She had been paying close attention to everything that was said but did not get most of it. Her confusion was more profound than Harry's was. The call for her to participate, even in some small way, was a benefit. She hoped she would perform admirably in whatever was to come.

Harry was at a loss what his story could mean to anyone. However, he proceeded to recount the events he had seen. The jet eyes of the hooded figure seemed to glisten with spectacular happiness at every syllable, as if savoring what was being said, the horror of it and the subtle things of note.

What alarmed Harry, though, was the expression on Jan's face. It went from polite and careful interest and attention and slowly evolved into a look of eternal horror and pain. It was like something out of a monster movie. Her face mutated into something of a mask or lost a mask that had concealed this horrified and saddened visage. It was the most terrible thing Harry had ever seen.

At one point, he stopped suddenly, shocked to see the paleness and coldness that seemed to reverberate in the room from her body. At a serious nod from the cloaked form, he continued to the end. He choked out the very last few words as though being strangled by an invisible tensile force. It had taken the last of his will to say this. He could not imagine what her horror stemmed from, but he was experiencing the fear of the truthfulness of that dream anew. It wracked his mind and body with a slight convulsion. The figure seemed ready to lick up such motions. Harry felt he'd better hold off on that; at least, later he could check to see if this was as groundless as he hoped.

He finished. Jan looked ready to faint. Harry felt he could as well. It was like a symphony of horror that the figure was conducting and was alone impervious to. Everything was wrong. The doily beneath the three untouched teacups seemed to highlight the ultimate horror of Harry's statements, the pristine order a complete foil to the chaos in their minds.

The figure relished the moment then spoke briefly. "Jan. Tell him."

She shook her head. "You must." She shook her head more vigorously and it seemed as if her head could suddenly fall off from weakness and roll across the floor to Harry's feet. Therein was pain. "Do it!" The command shattered the quiet order Harry's story had left.

She gulped and turned back towards Harry. "Harry. Do you remember what I told you when I first arrived at your door? How I found you, how they told me where you were? Well..." she suddenly could not go on. Her power was fading. She looked ready to faint again.

"Continue." The figure said it not as a command but more as a statement of fact.

"Harry. I saw this accident. I was there. I...I...I was in that car!" she nearly shrieked this last. "I was late. I felt like the car was drawn to the bus...i don't know what it was but... It was destiny, I think. I wish that I could undo it. I caused several deaths, many injuries. I cannot go a moment without re-experiencing that pain."

Harry stared. He had not expected something like this. Things were beginning to add up in a way that was just too much. It was strange. He felt no anger, just a blind emptiness. He felt drained of all positive or negative emotion. He was quiet.

"You...you remember," she began uncertainly, starting at his lack of emotional impact, "You remember what I said about those who die? How they come to live in those they touched? Well, I think that has happened with me. The five friends you have described are with me. They are all in my mind, although I never met them. They aren't dead," she said quickly at his look, "but they told me they were dislocated from themselves permanently. In that sense, their spirits are nearly dead, but not free to go to those who knew them, particularly. I guess I was close and able and open to such a thing. It was so much guilt to deal with. I had to do something. They told me to visit you and..."

She almost couldn't go on, but persevered. "And, they never told me much about you or your connection to all this. I didn't even know they were involved with the accident until after I had met you. Then, I...I couldn't bring myself to bring it up. We had such great times...I mean, well, I thought so and I couldn't...I couldn't give up the best thing to happen to me in years..."

She stopped. That was all. Harry knew it. The figure knew it. She knew it. Harry still felt that coldness and distance growing. It remained hovering over these visages. He should have been angry, hateful, burning, but perhaps he still couldn't accept it. It couldn't be like this. It was too wrong. Nothing compared to that growing distress he felt as his own lack of reaction. He had to get out.

"Don't believe? I can tell. You don't trust witnesses. You don't trust anything but your eyes. You are great indeed. Only your eyes are worthy, no others, no tongue of man. You are as fantastic as I foresaw. I waited long enough. Just go. Go look for yourself. I'll send you two there. Yes, Jan might as well go. Haha...she would like to meet them, I think. It will be a happy reunion for all."

Harry was still numb. It felt surreal, empty and full. Nothing and everything. He barely heard the patter of that figure's nonsense. It was like nothing to him. No one here mattered. Only...only them. It was tragically painful. He had abandoned them for himself so many years. Now, he was willing and hopeful to find them in that terrible state as before. This latest change felt so much worse. Things could not have digressed so far with them, could it?

"Well, have a pleasant trip. I will be looking in on you soon, Harry. Bye now, both of you." Without another word, Harry felt himself crunched by an invisible darkness. He was traveling. The crush was all that was. It was more than that whole place before. The pain was real, the pain made him feel real, completely.

Whatever he found when he reappeared, whatever the case, now was real, now he was alive. In a heartbeat, it was over. He arrived somewhere new.


	10. Chapter 9: The Waiting Room

Since the war, things had changed. People's trust had gone. The brief peace the climactic ending had created was shrouded in a lamentable bitterness. People's memories, their friends, and family had all been damaged irrevocably. No one would ever be the same. The wizarding world had noticed it, gradually. It was like an impish figure, there but unseen causing chaos without any detriment.

Harry had seen just the beginning changes as he fled society. He had begun to feel stifled by the pure impropriety of peoples' attitudes. Nothing felt right. People hid their homes in droves. Every neighbor was a reminder of the pain of a life all had shared. They mingled, but with groups unconnected to all their past friends. It was a world gone mad. Every public place became a haven with its own set of restricted barriers to entry. No longer could individuals Apparate into locations like the Ministry or St. Mungo's. Everyone feared a hidden foe. Everyone was afraid of the demon unseen, unfelt, but only sensed.

As a result, Harry's mouth dropped when he realized where he appeared. He had reappeared in a place that felt so strange and unknown. It felt like a dungeon, like a prison, but what was so surprising was that he appeared here at all. It was St. Mungo's. How? This very question appeared unabashedly upon the faces of the eight other people in this room. It was physically impossible. He couldn't have appeared in here. Not even Dumbledore could have overcome the Anti-Apparition spells on this place, especially not from miles away underground. It seemed an unlikely, an impossible fantasy.

No one recognized him, at first. Who expected Harry Potter, refugee among the Muggles, to reappear in St. Mungo's one day? A few voices cried out in amazement or fear. They had obviously gathered around to speak about something, someone they had in this hospital. Upon a second's notice, Harry realized they were in a briefing room. These were family members of seriously ill patients.

Then, as one, they saw him and he saw them. It couldn't be…but it was. The eight people standing there were Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, Percy, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, Mr. Lovegood, and Neville's grandmother. Harry could not comprehend it, not at first. How had they come to be here, now?

They seemed to have the same thing in mind.

"Harry," Mr. Weasley said, speaking in a tone of respectful coldness. "I see you've heard. We did not know if you would come."

"This was unexpected, I must say," Percy voiced with his usual unapproachable formality. "I can't say I approve of your mode of entrance. Breaking through the magical boundaries of St. Mungo's is very unbecoming of you."

Fred looked like he would say something about how brilliant it was but his sullen, clouded face would not allow that. Those two had changed, terribly, since their last visit with him. All of them had. Neville's grandmother looked like a walking skeleton.

Mrs. Granger, to whom Harry had barely ever associated with, voiced the unspoken question. "Who is that with you, Mr. Potter?" She had no depth to her voice, just a shallow bitterness and pain Harry could tell was not directed towards him. Surely…

When the words had sunk in, he turned to his left quickly. With a shock, he realized Jan was standing there in some trepidation. She seemed at a loss for all that had just passed. Harry had not noticed her standing there for her quietness.

Turning back to the group, he said, voice small and feeble, "This is Jan, a friend of mine."

The reaction of this pronouncement was subtle. A few murmurs, a couple carefully passed looks, it all read as Harry had expected. They could hardly believe he had a friend. He had changed. Maybe that was why he had returned. On the other hand, had he really just gone on with his life while they could not and only wanted to bury the past today.

It was quiet for a moment. No one was quite sure what to say. The Grangers, apparently feeling it most polite, stepped forward and introduced each other in that way people will do at a convention, shortly and without much thought. Jan answered, somewhat perplexed and still uncertain about her surroundings. She seemed as one awaking from an unusual dream.

"Oh, hi, everyone," she said with some hesitancy. Fred and George walked forward, solemnly, and took her hand. Mr. Weasley nodded and sat back down, forehead covered in a thin layer of sweat that did not have much to do with Harry's arrival.

Harry waited impatiently, while the group regarded their newest visitor. After Percy had made a solemn bow and wished her a pleasant day, Harry cleared his throat. Everyone looked back over at him.

He asked, "Is it...is it true? About the bus and ... and my friends?" He had not believed it before. He could not have. Their eyes were the only answer he needed. They were not, however, the only answer he received.

Mr. Weasley, a pale, gassy look coming over his face, said, "Yes, Harry. How did you find out?" He looked very worried and had the look of a man bereft of hope, just tired, tired of the grief he had gone through. Harry could guess, though would never have said so, that Mr. Weasley wished they had rather died. His face grew older every moment. It was terrible to behold.

Harry wanted to tell him, but he could not really believe it himself. Actually, he could not have borne the guilt of telling them and having the room turn on Jan with anger or disgust. Therefore, he did what he had to; he lied. "I read it in a Muggle newspaper. They had a short article on it, you see."

"Ah," said Arthur in a most unenthusiastic manner.

"Why have you come, Harry?" Percy asked pointedly. "You never felt it necessary to visit them while they were better..." Harry could hear the tint of bitterness edging into his voice. He really had changed a bit, from the old days. The death of their mother had shaken him greatly. She had died in his arms. No one could say he didn't care about family now. He had lost his left arm in exacting revenge against her killer, the Death Eater Dolohov.

Harry could feel his vibrant pain and felt ashamed. He had never explained his reasons for leaving; he could barely comprehend them himself. However, that wasn't the question he was asked. Why was he here? The Dark form had sent him. He knew that, but why? He still could not determine what that figure had wanted. It was such an oddity. Maybe the better question was why he felt he had to be here. Because he did feel that. He felt like coming home, in a sad way.

"I had to come. I really couldn't stay away," he said, lamely. This, at least, was true. "Can ... can I see them?" he added in his smallest voice.

Fred gave George a barely perceptible look. George returned it. "Why?" Fred asked, suspiciously.

Harry just looked at him. He could not believe the coldness in that question. Fred had always been on relatively good terms with him, even above the rest of the family. It was shocking where it ought not to be. Harry had been gone. He left without a trace. He never showed himself in public when he could avoid it. He setup measures to keep them out and never answered owls. Yet, even with the distance, he could not believe the sound of suspicion. He had never done anything against his old friends or their families. Of that, he was sure.

His face suddenly looked pained, but in no way accusatory or directed towards anyone. He answered, quite simply, "I'd like to see them...is all."

Mr. Lovegood stepped forward for the first time. "Why don't we all go? We can check with the healers for an update. I don't know. They knew Harry. Maybe they'd react to a peer more than they would with us."

George interjected, "Lavender and the Patils came by just yesterday, and they didn't change a wit."

"Oh, go on, boys," Mr. Weasley said, emptied. "It couldn't be any harm."

"Yes, let's all go by," Neville's grandmother said, attempting, in a meek way, to regain her previous authority in such things. Her purse, the same old ratty one she had carried for fifteen years, belittled her usual stature, her frazzled hair matted unceremoniously against her mangy hat.

Harry hesitated. As much as he wanted to appease this group, he knew he must make this visit alone. With a lump in his throat he voiced, "Er...I...I really think I would rather make this visit by myself, if you don't mind."

The mood changed perceptibly. Fred and George, whom Harry had seen coming more and more at ease with the idea, were suddenly looking at Harry with that unhappy sideways glare and muttered inaudibly to each other. The other family members looked shaken, a little. They appeared as though they did not understand. The request was clear, but the reasoning was suspect.

Mr. Weasley, sensing this, grabbed Harry's arm and took him aside. Harry let him. He had no will but knew it had to be as he had asked. It pained him to do it, but if he had to anger them to do it, he would. Arthur was saying something, but Harry really couldn't hear him. He was paying too close attention to the fly on the wall beside his hand.

"Harry," Mr. Weasley said. The sound of his name snapped Harry out of his reverie. Up close, Harry could see the lines of strain like great crevasses upon Mr. Weasley's visage. He could sense a tension lingering and growing along the corners of his old father figure's mouth. He was about to say something that hurt him. It was painful to witness. Harry hoped he would just get through it. He was almost impervious to pain now. He was beyond it. He had felt it all.

"Harry," he said again, in a surprised tone, seeing Harry's complete attention on him now. "The reason I've brought you aside is a concern that has arisen. It started as a tired joke of Fred's. It wasn't very funny, but we thought it was complete nonsense, especially as you wouldn't show up. But now...well, your presence has not left us at ease, I must say..."

Harry was a little confused, but kept his attention. Arthur's face nearly pleaded for his patience. He acquiesced. His attention made Arthur seem a little less pained, a little thankful, in fact. He spoke with more confidence.

"Now, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Times have changed, we all have. People just don't trust the way they once did, and I know we all owe you something, though few would mention it these days, something beyond anything we could repay, but...it's just fear...I suppose. Harry. The reason we would be more comfortable with at least a few of us joining you in there is..." his voice faltered for an instant, then recovered, "It's just that we haven't seen you in so long and you haven't visited us or them in so long."

"We see you've made some changes in your life; I'm glad you have a friend with you. It's a good sign," he went on. "But, well, you seem to be moving on, loosing the demons of your past, and well, we have worried that in order to do that you might do something, well, desperate to sever yourself permanently from us, from the past."

Harry was beginning to see. Before today, he would have been horrified; he would have been shocked, pained, hurt, and beaten down. Today he was none of those. He nodded. He accepted the understanding he was given. There was nothing behind it. He felt cold and removed from core to core. It was like the moment in a dream when one wishes it to be over and all the emotions and thoughts that had built him to this one powerful moment were abandoned for a rejection sure to abort the dream, to return him to reality.

His face must have shown this. It must have, yet Mr. Weasley thought he saw some reaction, some understanding. He nodded happily; his creases abated. He smiled briefly. "I'm glad you understand. You see, they were so worried; we all were, when you showed up. Now, if you'll just take me and Fred or Mr. Lovegood I think everyone will be all right with it. Now..."

"No," Harry cut him off, icily. "I understand your concern, but I have to go in there alone. I know you will think the worst, the lot of you, but I have to do what I have to do." Harry looked away. He didn't want to see the disbelief, the sadness, the possible anger growing in those kind old eyes. He didn't want to see it in the others, either. He hated confrontations with them. He had slowly begun to drift from them, tearing like an old cloth, slowly and painstakingly, away, after it had happened. Too many tears in the fabric, too many scars remained. He wanted out.

He had to see them. He knew he did. That dark shadow had had some purpose in it. He had to see them to believe. There, too, he could ask Jan. He had to have her confirm. He had to know the truth, away from the form, the dark being. He had to see the honest openness she had always possessed, to believe. Whatever the form had wanted, that thing was secondary or as nothing beside this incontestable need. It was nearly painful to comprehend, but he had to go it alone. The others would not understand; he didn't.

He turned abruptly from Mr. Weasley to the room at large and spoke in an unbroken voice of authority. "Mr. Weasley has told me about your concerns. I cannot tell you they are groundless. I will swear to you that on not too few occasions I did wish they had died outright that day ten years ago. Some part of me still wishes that were so, even now. However, I must make this visit, and alone. I will ask Jan to join me. She has never met them; I think it would be fitting. However, the rest of you must stay. That is all I have to say."

There was no stunned silence, no quiet disbelief, no seeping sadness, just blatant anger and wands withdrawn. They knew it would be no use, so did Harry, but they drew their wands. Harry thought, with a flicker of what might be the dying ember of regret; they were heroes, as they always had been.

He saw, in a blink, the determined faces surrounding him. They were hard and set. Six wands were pointed at his heart; even Neville's grandmother held hers steadily. The Grangers, the only Muggles besides Jan, had picked up chairs, determined to do what they could to protect their daughter. Silly, Harry's mind thought. For what are they doing this? Empty shells? Mindless vegetables? What was left of the friends he had known and loved? They were about as good as dead. Yet, he still wanted to know, had to see, for himself. He knew he had to fight for them.

His wand whipped and half of them crumpled, it came back around and the others were at their side. The chairs the Grangers had held floated casually back to their places. Jan looked horrified. She stared at Harry.

"They'll be alright. I just laid them in a sort of brief sleep. Perfectly harmless," he said, reassuringly, though he somehow felt he should feel something more along what her face had shown. They had been in the way, he reasoned, they would have end up hurt, if he hadn't. Yes, it was right. It was all right. He wouldn't have to see them later, wouldn't have to face their eyes, so accusing. It was better this way.

He walked calmly out of the door, wand still drawn. Jan paused. She knelt down and felt Fred's neck. She could feel a calm, slow pulse. His breathing was subtle and relaxed. She could see all of their faces. They looked so much younger, so much calmer in this sleeping state. It was like death. They had lost all their cares and slept soundly. Their anger, their anxiety had gone. She was not sure whether to be disturbed or relieved by this. Sometimes one must face one's pain to come out on top.

She had no time to ponder this. Harry was crossing the hall outside without a backward glance. She hurried after him. The door fluttered closed with a clink. The room was still, calm. The opposite of all they had known for the past ten years. They were at peace.


	11. Chapter 10: Through the Portal

Harry Potter, hero of the Wizarding World, savior of countless lives, destroyer of the greatest Dark Lord in a century, was afraid. He was afraid, not of powers or darkness or evils, nor of spells or people or monsters, but of the unknown. He was frightened of what he just could not see over the rim of time. He felt he knew what he would find, but could never be quite perfectly sure. The past was an open hatbox, the present an unveiling shroud, the future was beyond that shroud, as lost to him as his godfather, Sirius.

He could see it all before him, again. It had not passed over his mind in a long time. He could almost miss the details; the distinctive connections had faded, hadn't they? In some blurred haze, it seemed, he had stood with Voldemort. Outside the bubble, his friends lay, unconscious, newly incapacitated forever. He had not known this. He thought they were dead.

Voldemort laughed, laughed nearly to tears for the look in Harry's eye. His victory felt so certain, and Harry's loss before the downfall was the icing, the delicious icing on the cake. Harry struck. His eyes were ablaze; his mind was a whirl of cogs, spinning faster and faster with fury, creating heat where there ought not to be heat. He remembered hearing the words, but not saying them. He saw the flash but did not recall the incredible wrench of power, the tearing he was told his soul would have felt. Voldemort was dead on the ground, his laugh frozen in horror. It was over.

Then, before he could feel it all out, before he could make sense of his world, the rest had entered and the celebration of his victory was had. It was short-lived, for the discovery of the bodies was too much for them all. It had already been too much for him. He collapsed in a spasm of mental anguish.

He had failed. His greatest victory over evil had been a sham, a failure. He had meant to do something different. They had planned it out. He was almost glad his friends had not seen. They would have been sad, disappointed, and ashamed. He could stand visiting them the way they would be. He could not have stood there watching with their eyes so accusing.

The plan. He had studied magic with Hermione and Ron. They had pursued light magic from continent to continent, from tip of the world to tip. He had found it: the spell of light. Legend stated that it would undo all evil; it would course through the bounds of what was foul and create pure light, pure goodness. He had practiced. He trained. His will grew, his powers exploded. Hermione was brushed past, but she didn't mind. She was helping him face his greatest foe. It was for the sake of them all.

He mastered more spells than they had heard of in their entire wizarding lives. He overcame his barrier and nonverbal spells were a breeze. He could curse specific trees in the dark with highly complex spells. He wrote his name on a rock from one mile away. His control and power seemed insurmountable.

However, there was the damned spell. It nearly killed him the first time he tried it. As tired as he had been when learning the Patronus Charm in third year and Occlumency in fifth year, those were as nothing. Hermione and Ron took time to learn healing spells to prevent another near-tragic incident. As such, they became proficient at all manners of healing, Hermione in particular.

Harry could recall her eyes lighting up when she had mastered another technique. Although she never said so, he could see she had had an affinity for healing. No one would have thought, but it seemed so true. It fit, really, Harry had thought. She was good at so many things and this tied into most of them very well. _She never had a chance to look into it though, _he thought gloomily.

Nevertheless, he had failed. He had nearly conquered the spell when the Death Eaters had struck and the confrontation came forth. He had been missing some element. His hard work and mental state had not taken care of something. He agonized over it for days as he prepared. Hermione assured him that when the time came he would be able to do it.

She was wrong. He had flopped. The spell had nearly drained him and it had done nothing to Voldemort. He had laughed that same terrible laugh. The flash of light. The end. That was the past.

The present found him marching sharply, in a knowing fashion, through the halls of St. Mungo's. He could feel the others; he asked no sense of direction. He went the direction he had to go. This whole night it had been so. He was on a mission. He had to see, he had to know. There was no other alternative. Jan followed, barely registering in his peripherals. She would tell all.

The healers, some staring, walked past like shadows, parts of the scenery. They blended in until they seemed to blur the very horizon they represented. He lost track of time and space in those hallways. He could have walked for an instant or a thousand centuries. It was all the same. The sterile walls and floor, glittering with an opaque glaze, reflected all the light upon him.

He felt as one on a pedestal, paraded before a world of nothing. It was heartening and disheartening together. He lost all sense of presence in the hospital, all but his own. He swept the hallways, jacket billowing with more physical depth than the cloaked healers and patients he did not see.

He arrived at a set of doors. Of their own volition, they parted, and he entered. As Jan came timidly after, the doors closed behind and they continued. Another door, this of stained oak, and another of faded maple, and another of scarred holly, all passed in a whirl. The doors, smoothly, slid by as well. It was a path he felt rather than walked.

A last door, burgundy wood and crested crinoline-like molding parted. As Jan entered, he flicked his wand from a light downward angle to a vertical and the door slammed shut behind them, sealing them in the room. Jan could feel the wind rustle past her legs and neck, causing a cold shiver that ran the length of her back. She nearly cried out in surprise.

They were alone. However, the room was not empty. Five bodies, in various states of disrepair, had been laid as in state upon a circle of beds before them. No doubt, the healers had designed this so an attendant could enter and quickly evaluate the general state of the patients before continuing rounds. Harry stood at the focus of this elliptical piece. He could see all and in a way, it seemed as though it were meant to give each of them the perfect view of him, too.

The beds were of a simplistic design, sturdy wooden frames of a light tan color set against a wall space that appeared as from a meadow scene. In fact, the walls were alive with this essence, as was the ceiling and floor, though no true meadow was there. The floor, flat as a board, echoed impressions, visuals of a million and then some blades of the thinnest, most precisely drawn up grass that swayed to an innocuous and windless breeze. Dew glistened as it gathered. It was night, so the moonlight flooded the scene, caressing the life-torn faces and room facets with a calming balm. The stars were but a backdrop of softness.

Harry was impressed at the brilliance of the magic. Jan was touched and nearly cried at its beauty. She had spent her life amid a forest of standing skyscrapers and artificial edifices. This natural setting, though familiar in clips from speeding vehicles, was overwhelming. Harry could feel her emotion and looked at her. She looked different from anytime he had seen her so far.

She had a natural grace ever so much lacking any other time he had seen her. She fit. She could have sat upon that imaginary grass and become one with the surroundings; however contrived and unrealistic they truly were. Perhaps that was the thing. Jan fit so poorly with the reality around him that a falsehood, a deception, albeit a beautiful one, was her natural surrounding.

He felt a tug deep within, but he tore at it, ripped that thought asunder. He was here for a reason. He took in the withered forms, the near corpses that had once been his friends. Magic had its limitations. He had learned that the hard way ten years before and again nine years ago. He had failed them so much, twice over. He should have saved them. He could not.

Even the great Healers had done little to repair the tortured forms. He saw a chart, Hermione's chart. No, not Hermione, he reminded himself. She is gone. I failed and she is dead, as good as dead, no more to me. The descriptions were powerful. He had done so much, but with little benefit.

"It seems as though some external force prevents their recovery," one healer noted, his hand scrawling more illegibly as he went. "There is very little left within, now. The mind is wasted and the body just hangs on."

The others were the same. "The treatments have been to no avail...where a simple spell ought to have healed all, no affect is made..."

One particularly philosophical comment followed thus: "I do believe these pitiable creatures suffer at the hands of more than fate. There is direction, a path to this mad twisting road of ailments these last ten years."

Someone had scratched out this last carefully, as though an overseer had not approved of its content. Harry thought it was poignant. He thought he knew what was preventing their recovery. He just did not understand why.

He stopped reading. He stood up, straight and tall. He was terrible to behold. He looked at Jan. She saw. She did not cower, but looked back at him with a look he did not register. Was it pity? Pity for what? Was it guilt - guilt for the accident? He just had to hear it. He did not need her pity or her sense of guilt. They were all but dead. They had been more so before the accident.

"Jan," he said, simply, "Is it true? Did you do this to them?"

She nodded slowly, shortly. Jan could find no words to express what was evident. She had said it all before. He knew that, he just had to confirm. He could not accept the cruelness of fate, the exactness with which his failures had twice rent the lives of those closest to him.

'How do you know that?' he wanted to scream at her. She had fled the scene. She had never seen them. They were not in the paper and at St. Mungo's they were not to appear in Muggle press.

She saw his thoughts; they must have sat pensively upon his eyelids or near his left cheek. She understood. She nodded and stepped forward. Her eyes returned to that glossy phase they often took up around him. Her face softened to a pale glowing translucence; he could almost see the flowing meadow through her face, through her eyes, in her soul.

She spoke, "I told you, the first time I spoke with you, that they had sent me. I told you just now that these were they. I can see them, young and brilliant, calm and loving. Their hearts overflow at your presence. It makes me feel light, happy, in a time when I could not muster it otherwise. They speak. I listen."

"You see, they are with me, just as I am with you now, but not so visibly. They care about you, Harry. They worry, they cry."

Harry shook his head. He couldn't, he wouldn't hear this. It wasn't...no... He could not stand to think of them in this way. They were lifeless shells. They had no mind, and the minds they had lost were not their own. They were foreign, nothing, absorbed into the average nothingness of the population. They couldn't be anything more.

"Shut up!" he said far too quietly to be effective.

She persevered painfully it appeared. "Harry, please...please understand. They love you. They have tried to be with you since...whatever it was that did happen. You closed up, like a turtle. They couldn't be there to comfort you; you held back. I don't think they blame you. It just hurts them. I don't want them to be in pain anymore. Your pain causes them pain. Harry," she broke off shortly. He had jammed fingers in his ears, very immaturely. He twisted his head, rocking in twitches.

"HARRY!" she shouted, uncharacteristically angry. He looked over, fingers still blocking his ears, but loosely, in shock. He saw such a pain in her eyes, a disappointment. It was all too familiar, that look. That look he had never seen but imagined a thousand times. He had almost heard their collective voices in hers. It was like a dagger. He wanted it to stop. He had to make it stop. Anything. He felt like he was grasping for emptiness...for straws...for anything!

Her voice softened and chilled, tense fingers pried his hands from his ears. He could hear, but there was nothing audible. The silence was powerfully full. Her hands rested, at ease, within his. The coldness seemed to dissipate. Her face, though worried, still had a look of immense comfort and care. She could see that whatever she said now he would hear. She could tell him, finally.

BAM! The door exploded inwards. The hallway light was impressive. A glare shielded the visages of the men and women in the doorway. Harry's eyes adjusted. He saw all of them, here, in the room. He felt no driving purpose, just a hopeless emptiness. He wanted to escape, but knew not how. He found his hands free of Jan's and his wand swung upwards again, robotically. He did not know why, but he felt nothing. It was like a river that had flowed but moments before had been dammed up.

This time, faster than Harry, faster than the dozen spells of friends and healers, and faster than time was Jan. She leapt between the two divisive groups. She was a bridge of light between their shining, sterile hallway and his darkened pastureland.

All hesitated. Her lack of wand caught all off guard. She was no threat, and therefore had become the greatest of all. She had accomplished what a dozen wands could not. She halted an unstoppable, unthinking machine. The cogs halted and waited for a sign, a split second thought, to begin again. It did not come.

She did not say a word, but stood there, calmly, impassively staring between the two sections, standing, as she was, in the thin sliver where the grey-greens of the interior grass-like floor met the glow of fluorescent lighting. Seeing that neither dark nor light were encroaching, she turned calmly towards each person, then nodding to herself, stepped forward.

She came up to each shocked individual by the door frame, and, leaning in close, whispered for a moment, some longer, some shorter. Their wands lowered, one by one, in succession. Fred and George stood stony faced and grave, eyeing bitterly their brother and sister's prone faces. Percy's legs nearly gave way. He grasped the doorframe for support. Arthur, the Grangers, and Neville's Grandmother collapsed into tears. Jan felt for them, but continued until she had come full circle. The healers stood, wands lowered a few degrees, uncertain looks in their eyes.

Harry looked on. He felt a desire to rush forward, to comfort, to be with them, to cry on their shoulders. He had no idea what Jan had said, but he could tell it had touched each in his/her turn. He could not move. He was bound. His mind was restrained, his body imposed upon. It was as if someone had grabbed his jacket and held it still and silently from behind. He would not proceed. He could not, but he knew not what held him.

Jan returned to his side, and took his hand. She meant to lead him from the place. He could see that. He could see the hope in her eyes, the beginning touches of peace. He wanted to sigh. He felt exasperated that she could not see his obvious restraint. The naiveté of her belief was both stirring and crushing. He wanted to curse the nothing. He was not complete. He was broken.

Then, it happened. She was tugging him slowly towards the door, all confidence and strength that he now lacked. Darkness fell. A violent wind brushed the mourning and pained faces in the doorway, faces now in shock, through the portal, dumping them unceremoniously on the step before closing the door on them. Harry could hear the beating hands on the panels as from a long distance.

A voice emerged. "Now, now, Harry. I am disappointed in you!" The figure reappeared in the air before the pair. "How could you miss out on this last lesson? You can't leave class until we are done here. You were doing so well. You would regret being marked down for truancy. Tut tut."

Harry was surprised, but also not. He did not care for this voice. It had opened up too many passing pains, too many wounds. He had not seen any true crime by it, but its rudeness, its intrusiveness had bugged him enough.

"Stop! Enough of your games. If you have something planned, go ahead with it. If you plan to attack me, I welcome it! I will stop you! If not, get out of here and leave all here and me alone. I have no need of you or your 'class'. Be gone!" Harry said with a solidity that surprised him at that moment. Jan had hidden behind him, showing a fear of the darkness or that figure, which had not been there before.

"Have I ever indicated I wanted to harm you? Haha...such quaint ideas. Like I could harm you; you could be so...so very useful," it answered, "And as for leaving, I don't think any of us will be leaving this room just yet. Oh, no. We have unfinished business to attend to, you and I, and your little friends here, to add to the mix. Haha."

Harry glanced at the empty vessels. Despite what he knew of them, he still considered that past, those beings he had once known therein. "Stay away from them!"

"Them? Haha...so, you still consider those shells that way? Alternatively, might I say, you try to justify them in that manner? Am I right? Of course I am. Search deep down. You know it. I know it. Even Jan has seen it. She is perceptive for a little bus ramming, friend killing Muggle."

Harry felt Jan shrink a little more behind him. Harry's arm tensed up at the terrible words. He grew angry that she was spoken of so, but a part of him, a part deep down, somehow wanted to agree with the essence of it. She had done this. 'No!' Another part would yell, 'Voldemort did this...' The former, 'Did he? Was it not you, Harry, who failed?'

The figure sat, interestedly, as though watching this little volley pass back and forth, growing and shrinking in intensity, enjoying the little devilry it had wrought upon him. As his mind settled down, stalemated in one of his oldest battles, once more, the figure spoke again.

"Now, if we are all collected internally again, perhaps we can get down to business." With a smirk and a whirl of cloak, the room lit again, revealing the room and everything within it much more starkly, much more openly than ever previously. Harry could see all. The figure's lesson had begun...


	12. Chapter 11: The Gamble

Amid a sense of utter emptiness, crossing lines of time and space, lay a hand. It was curled most unnaturally upward, clutching at air above a face frozen in cold horror. It was Hermione, but not as he had seen her in many, many years. He could never forget her as he saw her now. It had seemed such a loss, such a painful time, in their second year, when the Basilisk had frozen her in this expression. The few times he had been allowed to see her were burned into his memory like with fire.

Beside her was a pale, bemoaning figure, seeming on the edge of death, it choked on some unseen substance, hardly catching breath for the pain of it. It was Ron; he could not but feel the icy crush within his heart that that instant had wrought. He could remember the fear, the sensation of premature loss that had threatened to take hold. Luckily, he had remembered the Prince's notes on bezoars. He had reacted when a teacher had not. Did that make him better? Did it make him colder?

Luna lay, without much peace, but without these external expressions of pain. Harry recalled she looked just as they all had from the moment Voldemort's spell had affected them. It was a horror unlike the others. It was impermeable and simple. She appeared tormented but otherwise fine, like a great losing battle was taking place within her mind. Harry shuddered and looked on, inexorably drawn to see what would come next.

It was Neville. He lay facedown, seeming dead. His hair, clothes, and very body appeared shaken loose from their fast architecture. He clung to nothing, but was probably the most at peace of all there. He was unconscious but unmoving. Harry remembered that he had tripped over this image, only later to find out he was better off than appeared.

Cold as death, pale as snow-dust, and beautifully preserved from memories long past, Ginny lay now before his eyes. He could not take this most of all. Her entanglement with Riddle had nearly lost him Ginny once, and that was just when he saw her as Ron's sister. How much more was the pain he felt at Riddle's final act of vengeance...?

He wanted to touch her face, but his arms acted as though they brushed a wall, a sheet of thin glass holding him back. He petted the air in a soft vertical stroke. He had forgotten two people were standing behind him. He had forgotten these were memories, not real images. He had forgotten everything but that face. Pain seemed to well up from deep down, beneath all that he had set in the way.

Then, the laugh came. "Haha, Harry, Harry, Harry. When will you learn to distinguish truth from simple illusion? When will you toss out the past for the present, the future?" the voice rasped, "You are so easily fooled. Snape was right, wasn't he? You never could learn to hide your heart in subtleties. But he was the greater fool, in the end, wasn't he?"

Harry did not answer. He began to fume. He was not so much angry at the figure; he knew he should expect this of it. Harry became furious with himself. He would not grant an answer.

"Yes, listen, that's a good boy. Severus Snape underestimated your power. He did not see the power you could have with your attachments; that is why he failed. That is why I will not. I see you. I know you better than you do. On the other hand, perhaps you do know, but will not admit it. It is immaterial."

"Harry?" a small timid voice broke in. Harry turned. Jan looked like she wanted to say something.

"Hush, dear. Hush," the figure said, growing more impressive with its calm exterior hovering mere inches before her. "The grown-ups are having a discussion." She shrunk in fear.

"Leave her alone, will you? It is me you want, right?" Harry said, not realizing the words were forming until they were out of his mouth.

"Quite right, quite right, but she was going to interrupt. We really do not have time for this. You see, we are on sort of a timetable, here. Where was I? Oh, yes... you see, your friends as you did then, at those critical times when they were at their weakest, when you were."

"You see them so because it is easier. Look again. Look and see pain."

Harry saw that they had suddenly changed. They, once more, were those ragged bits of flesh, those tattered remnants of souls secured to the mattresses by the greatest healers of St. Mungo's, of the world. He was surprised. He looked at the figure, hood to eye. The figure, for once, was completely wrong. He did not say anything. The figure, seeing his quick turn from the image, laughed.

"Yes, it is too painful for you to see them so. It is all different, now, isn't it? However, we all know they are not there; they are gone. They may never have been, for all it matters. You have forgotten them, and rightly so. Now you can see your justification, late in coming as it is. Haha..."

Harry felt something uncomfortable squirm in his stomach, like a couple eels battling over the spare bit of organ space his innards afforded. It ached like a bruise but he could not find a verbal expression for what he felt. It was a twisting sort of emptiness that filled him.

He felt a pair of lips at his ear, words tumbled out like water, in a rush, frantic, "Harry, listen. They are here, they are. I can hear them more loudly here than I could anywhere else. Don't believe him. I know them...they must..."

A sudden smashing motion threw him and Jan apart. The figure had seen her sneak around and flattened her. "Now, now, that is not very polite," it said, with a lackadaisical sternness. "Please listen. Do not interrupt or I shall have to make you leave." A few teeth appeared, pointed and dark at the very center of the hood, where light could barely seem to penetrate.

"You can't! I have to be here, Harry wants me to. He asked me to come, didn't you, Harry?" she asked with a bit of fear and hope mixed in her voice.

Harry nodded in assertion. He almost wished he had not brought her, but he had not known. He didn't want to cause her any more pain. She seemed to brighten and sat neatly on a stool at a bed's end. The figure swept before Harry, returning his attention instantly to the topic at hand.

"What do you want?" Harry asked, "Really. I can tell you are no fool, but your very presence here makes no sense. You wish to propagate dark arts, of that, at least, I can tell. Why, why would you come to the very antithesis of dark artistry, the slayer of the darkest wizard of our age?"

"Really? Is that what you are?" the voice sneered, touching with a light flutter amusement in its sound. "So, all that talk, all the pageantry around the fall of Voldemort has convinced you? Hasn't it? You really are their little poster boy perfect hero..."

The laugh in this last sentence nearly made it inaudible. Harry felt the powerful urge to lash back with anger, with some well thought up quip, but had none. He stayed silent. Silence bade him to think. He had finished Voldemort. He remembered, the spell, the intent, the flash. No one else was there, right? It had to be him.

The friends had suddenly become paralyzed, and he grew blindingly angry. He hadn't seen it and never felt it done, but in shock, he surely couldn't be expected to notice or feel everything. Anything. Ever.

What if Voldemort had been defeated by something else, by a backfiring spell or some such? It had happened before. Harry still had faced him when none else could. He had instigated that end. It was he, Harry, who destroyed the Horcruxes. It was his victory.

"Yes. Enjoy that. Enjoy such shortsighted thoughts. You wish you could be sure, don't you? It would make life so much simpler, wouldn't it? The fact is, only one individual knows the fateful events of that day in the most crucial details. I am he. You were blinded by 'rage' as you call it. You were in shock, you hid in your little turtle's shell and did not witness, not truly witness all that befell."

The figure seemed to savor that moment, that precious moment when doubt began to well uncontrollably within Harry's mind and being. A part of him, a small, precious part, shoved back, trying to lend peace and calm to his shadowed mind. It was useless; the light it lent had not the strength to unravel the knots.

He let it go. It was not worth it. "So what?" he said permissively, "If I don't know the truth, it means nothing. Voldemort is vanquished, isn't that enough? I faced him, I destroyed his Horcruxes, and he is gone. I do not think this is a question of victory or honor. I did what I could, like so many others, to defeat the dark lord, Voldemort."

"Haha," the cold peal rang. "You don't actually believe that. You have a strong sense of defensiveness. Brushing off as irrelevant something you feel is vital to you is just an escape. Because, you see, if you had to face the truth, the failure would be complete. You know that you failed in your intention; you failed your fallen friends. What if you failed completely?"

Harry sat still; he had not realized that he had collapsed soundlessly upon the edge of Ginny's bed. He felt a dazedness that he had fought off and on for years. Every now and again, he could admit to his own heart, he had pondered the events of that evening. The vagueness of that moment always frightened him. He felt something unresolved, something incomplete. However, then, his life was like that, too, so that might have just been a side effect.

Unconsciously, he began to stroke the hand at his side. It was soft and unblemished. It was as he had remembered. One thing, in this cold room, was as it had been, as it should be. A thought, like a tear, slipped painfully from the top of his mind to its base. As it trickled slowly down through his brain stem and to his spine and extremities, it brought with it an involuntary shudder.

The figure ignored this. "What, I ask you, could solve this dangerous divide? You are confused, uncertain. What you believe and can logically recall have such a wide gap that the world seems to tumble between it."

It floated, dreamlike, to Hermione's side. Looking down, it reached out and pulled up an echo, a memory, not unlike that of Harry's earlier vision of her frozen from the Basilisk. This memory was a golden necklace. At its base was an hourglass shape, a powerful tool of the wizarding world, a Time Turner. Hermione had used one such object their third year to make classes, and she and Harry had ended up saving two lives with it one day, temporarily, as Harry found out later. Death came for all, in their time.

"Funny things," the mysterious figure spoke, almost giving a sense, a comprehendible sense of gender or personality in this statement, "Time Turners. They manipulate the status of time and space, allowing the user to alter the past as he or she wishes, but by implication allow no true change to occur. All is in a line; all is as it had to be."

"Every event, every moment, caught, forever suspended in past tense, but some waiting and already completed by that sudden touch of the future's hand. You stopped Dementors from destroying yourself and your friends' lives years ago, thanks to one of these."

Harry did not ask how it knew this. It didn't really matter, did it? "So, what?" he asked.

The figure seemed a little annoyed, "Come now. Isn't it obvious? Must I kowtow to the drag you set on a mind capable of so much? Must I drag you forcibly from your comfort zone to those places where you would never wish to go?"

At no answer, it continued huffily, "A moment, a moment long contemplated and in which such immense pressures and spell work often rips a slight hole in the very fabric of existence. At such rips, time can be altered such as to allow the passage back and forth of a single soul, for a single moment. Surely, given the chance, you would take the plunge, make the leap into what is unknown, to find out, to learn the truth, to discover a past you never knew and learn more about the power within you, wouldn't you?"

Harry considered, it didn't quite make sense, but if he could go back, if he could confirm what he knew or learn the truth, however horrible, it could make a difference. Maybe, if his moment granted it, he could save his friends; maybe he could prevent their tragedy. Wouldn't that be worth it? He hid this last thought, though he suspected the figure knew that motive. He could almost feel its wicked grin beneath that hood.

Besides, what was there to lose? He had but to go and return, that sounded simple enough. He could save lives, change the world. It was all before him like a feast. His internals licked hungrily. He thought of the lives, the five wonderful lives he could recreate, could know retroactively. The figure had said the past was immobile, but that was nothing. He was Harry Potter; the impossible was just a set of arbitrary rules. These were his friends. If he had the opportunity, he would save them. Whether it took his life or his sanity, he had to try.

Jan had sat, since her last outburst, still and attentively. Now, she seemed to hold more still than before, unusually still. It was as though one bracing for a powerful impact would sit, expectant and in pain from the oncoming blow. Harry did not see this. His mind was elsewhere.

The figure brought him back. "There is," it began, clearing its throat, "one little stipulation. Recall, I said that the point in time to be jumped to requires a powerful breech in time/space. The one you are going too has a natural one, the death of Voldemort and, of course, the...er...cause of his demise. Now, in order to make it all clear, to create the gap rightly, you must go and return or things could get messy. Time will not allow you to remain in the same plane as yourself in such a method as this. It is but an instant, really."

"In order to get back, you will need as powerful an event, or more, to break the time stream here."

It was a simple sentence but the implications were incredible. Harry knew what he would have had to do. He couldn't. It was monstrous! He couldn't kill the figure, as distasteful as that was to him; it alone knew the way in or out of this magical shift. Moreover, the figure would not let anyone in or out. That left his friends. However, how could he justify killing one over another to save the rest? It was horrible.

He had to refuse. He had to...he couldn't. For some reason, he felt that this gap, this emptiness, this sense of un-being was focused horribly upon that event years ago. Only true resolution would bring him round. He had to know! He felt a selfish twinge. What would they care? They were as good as...he couldn't say it. It hurt so much. He would care. He had to voice this.

"No. Not them. There has to be another way. They may be, as you say, nothing but empty husks. They may be. But Jan said...Jan said..." Jan.

"Jan," said the figure, dark specks glittering behind shadows deep and unfeeling.

Both turned. She sat, silent and frozen, but not in fear. She was shocked, this was true, but looked resigned to whatever the moment would bring. She did not say anything. Harry would not think of it. He could not. She was more a friend than these others had been in years.

Harry spoke first, "No." He said this with a falling authority. He was running out of options. "There must," and he said this with withering hope, "there must be some other way. Forget it." He clenched his fists with a renewed firmness, as though voicing the right thing had given him more strength. It was the right thing. Five lives weren't worth the complete sacrifice of one, were they? They had had their chance. Jan had her own. It wasn't fair.

"Haha," the laugh echoed, "How poor you sympathetic fools are! She helped cause all of this, don't you remember? They were living normal, everyday lives, but then she ended that. Others died as well, and she fled. Did you ever bother to ask her why she fled? She could have helped. No one ever heard; she did not receive punishment for it. She never repaid her debt to their families. She never did anything to show remorse, true remorse."

Harry knew what it said to be true, but could not help but pity the poor, shaky wraith before him. She seemed, too, but a child who has upset a few of his playthings. She had not meant it, but felt ashamed and scared afterwards. It seemed natural, if sad. He could not; he would not accept this solution. Yet, the temptation lay there, in the back of his mind. He grasped for straws. He found one.

"What of those dummies from before? I used the Avada Kedavra to eliminate your little trap of my friends' twins. Why not use that moment? I could use a time turner to get back to that moment, surely?"

"Tut, tut, Harry. Did you not listen at all? They were nothing, an illusion, a powerful spell to mimic the actions of a human. Nothing more. Nothing at all, really."

"Then, it is off. I cannot do it. You may wish it, but I can still refuse. Resolved or unresolved, my self-satisfaction is not worth this. What would happen if I made the jump with no clear jump-back?"

"There is no telling," the voice spoke. "Everything could be fine, but it could all go wrong. You could bring one demons you cannot imagine upon yourselves and others. I wouldn't recommend it. It is an incredible risk." The voice had become steady, solid and unmoved. It sounded resigned to a certain nothingness that was encroaching. Something like a clock seemed to tick inside the extremities of the room. Something was tolling down toward an inevitable something.

"What could be worse than what is?" Harry asked rhetorically, and thinking, added, 'It could only improve, and it will improve. I will make it so! I have to, for them, for Ginny, for Ron, for Hermione, for Neville, for Luna, for...for me, too.'

He set his eye. The figure noted and nodded. Harry could almost feel a sense of fear, of reserve in that faceless being. He had made the thing nervous. 'Good,' his mind shouted, 'now, it knows the true power of bravery, of will!'

"Show me the way," he said clearly and slowly. The figure nodded and with a gesture revealed a portal of whirling madness. "This is the stream of time, leap through and search out the time you seek. It will be a bright spot in the midst of darkness. Nevertheless, beware, if you wander off, you may be lost forever in time. Your window is short. I know not what you will wreak upon this world by your foolish choice, but you will just have to live with that. Yes. You will regret it; I'm sure. Your will is set; nothing I can say will change it. Goodbye, for now, Harry Potter!"

Harry dove in, taking his life and the whole of existence in hand, as he did so. His greatest gamble, his greatest challenge, he took up for five friends. If he couldn't do it, who could? This question was the last to echo through his mind as he flew through the air, seeing a terrified Jan and a, once more, impassive cloaked figure, slightly overlapping from the angle, seeming as one long, congruous being. Then all went green-grey and he was gone.


	13. Chapter 12: Truth and Light

An instant, a moment in time, can seem as an eternity in the right lighting, in a moment specifically focused on. The more repetitions or concentration held upon it, the more power the mind has to recall it. It becomes clearer as a paint job with more layer applications. In a sense, a brief time can stretch, extend, the more one notices of its details. The mind, in the strictest sense, can only comprehend so many things, so many objects or movements in a period allotted. Therefore, it could be conjectured that the more one witnesses, the longer the time that has passed.

What if this was not the case? What if a moment could come when the clarity and absorption of one's mind was heightened beyond the physical means normally available? Would not the instant extend beyond its physical capacity into a hyper-moment? Such it was for Harry.

He found that, unlike the Time Turner, this form of time travel was instant and eternal. It was closest to when he traveled by Floo Powder. In the Floo Network, you can see and exit through various fireplaces along the way, as you pass them. As Harry was swept through time, he could see and, he believed, could have exited into any time slot he had chosen. Unlike the Floo Network, a relatively small grouping of connecting nodes, the one he traveled in now was immense. He could feel the enormity of time and space. He felt at a distance of an eternity from any one node and they surrounded him in a complete circle, a tunnel indeed. Every thin crest of the circle was an instant going from the beginning until the end of time. Somehow, and it made no sense, Harry could comprehend both directions and knew he could traverse to either end effortlessly.

The tunnel shifted and rotated in and out of line as worlds and places, times and spaces faded in and out of existence. He felt a power of understanding that transcended his experiences with time. Now he got it. He wasn't traveling through time. Time was traveling through him. The tunnel was simply a physical embodiment of his existence, of all that was possible for him to connect with in his lifetime, every twist and turn he could have, did, or did not take was mapped out before him. He was restricted to touch the moments he had perpetuated and the line he had created.

He did not have far to go. It was easy to find. Wavelets of some radioactive element seemed to permeate the air ahead. Shockwaves of some blood red substance pounded upon the surface of the eternal nothingness that was his life, altering the universe retroactively. No other section seemed to resemble this, including the present moment. As he approached, he saw the light grow and the waves became fiercer.

The red was benevolent and sharp. It called him home and thrust him away. He felt compelled to step forward and fall away. He had to go in. He flew through a film, tearing its surface quickly. It was hot and sharp. He felt a thousand cuts upon his face form and heal over instantly. He felt the lick of fire upon his heart, and looking saw nothing. Before him was a surface of glass. A voice in his mind whispered caution. He could see the blurred figures of living persons behind it, reenacting an instant for all eternity. He didn't think. He shattered through the glass. Then, everything changed. Everything became clear and was terrible...as truth.

He appeared, through that shattering glass, in a room familiar from his memories and nightmarish dreams. He could see it all as though frozen, awaiting the cue to begin. Harry saw himself facing Voldemort, that look of failure fresh upon his brow. He had not gotten the spell off, but had to come up with something else. There was still the determination. That Harry remembered well. Outside, rushing in the doorway, in motion and motionless at once, his friends came. Where, where was Voldemort's spell? He had to counter it. He had not had the chance last time. He had not seen it fired upon them. Maybe he could stay their progress.

He rushed forward and felt a tug upon his shoulder, like a branch holding back a weary traveler. Looking back, he saw a line of that same glassy substance, mixed with the heated film. It held him bound, unable to completely enter and remain in the place he was. It needed something. The more he tugged, the more it expanded, forming a dome-like film along this side of the room.

He ignored it. He had to reach his friends. He pulled back. A stretching sensation, a pull of incredible force fought against him. Like a bit of wire contorted to unusual length, this thread holding him threatened to snap. It began to pain him unbearably. Lights flashed in his eyes, his stomach compressed and stretched. His legs wobbled, unable to move.

He pulled out his wand, pointed at the line, _'Diffindo!'_ he thought. It snapped. It was sudden, it was unprecedented, it happened. Like a rubber band, he shot forward, crashing through his friends and hitting the far wall in less time than it takes to blink. _'Yes,'_ he thought, _'I've stopped them!'_ He felt slight relief. It was short-lived.

They were on the ground, lying as he had knocked them, lying as he remembered them, except, it was different. He could see a bit of that substance, the essence of this time space moment covering their faces. He rushed over and tried to remove it. He could no longer touch them, or anything. Like a ghost, he could witness this existence but not participate. He had done nothing to prevent his friends' conditions. He had caused it.

Harry froze. He couldn't believe it. All this time he had thought it some spell, some terrible last lash of Voldemort's, one last stab at his heart. He had been wrong. Again, he turned and tried to wipe the mess from their bodies, nothing happened. He looked up. Voldemort was looking now, directly at him, and laughing. He could see the ludicrous nature of the situation. The younger Harry, in shock, saw the laughter and grew angry. Harry watched this as in a dream. He could not say what was worse, that he had harmed his own friends or that he had done so in order to save them. Voldemort's eyes burned into his, the laughter affixed into his very eyelids like a searing brand.

He wanted to get out, he wanted to escape, but he couldn't. He felt frozen in place, as verily as the bodies below him. The protesting beast within his belly roared and fought hard against the cage of his body. It broke free. Harry saw, as through some jaded mirror, the image of his young self, eyes glazing and then closed from the strain of the impact upon his mind. Harry knew the feeling well. He also remembered what came next. Glaring hungrily at Voldemort, he felt a hatred that had never touched him before.

It was Voldemort's fault. He had caused all this, directly or indirectly. He knew his younger self did not have the strength to stop him; he was weak then, scared and mournful. The new Harry was not. He was bitter, he was angry; he was frustrated by a world that had not made sense in years. It made perfect sense now, but at what cost? The beginnings of some odd pulsation in his mind prevented this thought from anything more than a sad whimper and it withered.

Only the heated pulsation remained. It grew and intensified with that anger, cycling back more heat to anger him and soon, the anger itself was without purpose, it was hatred for the sake of hatred. Now, he was ready. Drawing his wand before him, he did the unthinkable. Two words, a green blur of dull, putrid light, like the expulsion of something horrible from his system, cleansing, purifying his innards of that reckless cycle of hatred and bitterness. He heard a thud.

He felt powerless, as though he had unleashed a horrible monstrosity into the world. This lasted but a moment. A tidal wave of euphoria caught him, the exultation of the power he had just had, the ending of another with his own hands. He fought. It was dirty, it was unclean, it was wrong. 'In this instance, I had to do it', he thought, pressing his argument in hopes of guaranteeing its validity. He had had to do it. Voldemort had needed stopping and he had done it, just as destiny had planned from the minute Voldemort fingered him as a target.

The truth he experienced did not bother him so much as the hunger he felt to do it once more. He felt the beast, caged once more, prowling the perimeter for a chance to take that step once more. A wound had opened in his side; the stitch work was not permanent.

It was then, in that moment of horrified gratification, that Harry felt the tug. The goop, the slime that had plastered his friends' faces and bodies, that had ruined all, was calling him back into the stream of time. His moment was up.

With a lurch he was thrust back through the void of his own self, transported past memories and thoughts that had just recently intrigued him, interested him, brought back emotions long since forgotten. Now, it felt as an empty tunnel, funneling a listless spirit from one doom to another.

Harry swam alone in his thoughts much more so than he did in the time stream. Here, for the briefest of moments, without the encumbrance of his own body, he could step back and see all. His past, his present, perhaps even his future were laid before him on a platter of gold rusting from that central moment he had just been part of. Somehow, his past, present, and future had met in that instant, as it does at all times but ever so slightly differently, and sealed the fates of five of his friends.

How could it have come to this? Everything, every thought, every word, every dream, every action had led him to this moment. He felt completely powerless. His eternal sense of personal freedom and choice seemed like a foolish joke before the evidence of the past lifetime. Nothing he did really mattered; it had all been foreseen. That figure had known; whatever it was. It had known the truth when he, the only witness to the scene who was conscious afterwards had seen but deceit.

But how? It could not have been there. He had seen the scene with perfect clarity, just as clearly as Voldemort himself had, before he died. No one had been there. Beyond Voldemort, Harry, and the five friends, not a soul had been standing in witness. He knew instinctively that not even an invisibility cloak could have hid a person from Harry at that moment. He had seen it all. Had he tormented some information out of the friends, if that were possible? Or, perhaps, he had done something to Harry. Had he altered Harry's memory, catching him napping, perhaps, and then used that information against him.

He did have an unnatural set of powers. Harry argued, but the new truth gave no indication of past learning. He had not known what he knew now. He had never known. Or, had he? He had always doubted that instant. He had felt a strange detachment from the spell that killed his foe. Yet, he had always assumed it was his anger, his pain and suffering that had prevented this connection. Some parts had doubted, his inner mind pressed, some never believed.

He landed. The room was the same. The figure and Jan were exactly as he had seen them, unmerging as he fell back through the opening. Jan fully detached herself and rushed to his side. The figure stood back, aloof, but with an amusedly assured stance. It knew. He did not know how, but it knew more than it ought. It knew all. Jan seemed aware, if peripherally, that something terrible had befallen him beyond that whirlpool of flashing green and grey that had just faded, revealing, once more, the picturesque scenery of that room.

Jan held him close, her arms seeming as thin as mist upon his weighted form. He could not sustain himself. He had exhausted his mental faculties. She just held him, silently. The figure, would have scowled, surely, if it had a face, but did nothing to stop this. It waited. Harry could nearly hear the impatience of its silence. He moved to get up. Jan restrained him.

"Harry," she whispered, ever so softly, "Whatever happened, it is passed. You haven't changed, not really. You're still Harry." She said this last with a light smile upon her lips and a soothing light in her eye. Harry wanted to believe her. "Your friends still love you. They don't mind. They are patient. They say they don't blame you. You did what you had to. You had to."

She seemed on the point of choking on tears at this last. Harry could feel that same strange churning within his stomach, as though a monster was hoping to be unleashed. He had to restrain it, even if it meant eternal pain and suffering for him. He could not let it loose, not any more. She saw the look of horror that had come to his eyes. Her eyes drooped, in failure. Jan's attempts to calm him would do nothing. They both knew it. Her lips formed the words, "They love you, still," but she remained silent.

Taking her hands gently from his shoulders, he stood, determined that he face the figure, that enigmatic creature through whose plan this had all come about. Standing, shakily, first using the bedposts of Ginny and Ron to gain his footing, then stepping weakly forward, he approached the towering image of power and deception. He looked a pitiable hero, a disrobed disgrace, as he approached a foe that was unimportant in terms of clarity and place.

As he passed Hermione's bed, his legs were given new strength, as from some new power, some added confidence. At Neville and Luna's end of the room, he eclipsed this strength with a new level of determination and will. He had to stand tall, for the friends he had just destroyed. He had to stand, because nothing stood between them and this figure, this floating image, not unlike the average poster of death.

It did not move and it did not speak. Its purpose had been achieved, almost. It knew to wait. _'It had seen this, too,' _Harry reflected, angrily, but kept on walking. Despite his gait and powerful eyes, his right hand shook shortly as he stepped before the being. Then, he slid it upward in a neat and elegant arc, peaking just above the skullcap of this being, and with the simplicity of someone combing back one's own hair with one's fingers, he slid off the hood.

A sudden hush came over the room. The silence paused a moment, shocked and awaiting the moment to pass, to continue its course. Harry could not blink; his eyes scrutinized every surface, every crevice of that face, as though expecting it to vaporize and thus dissipated, leap from his memory simultaneously. It was an older face, but familiar. He had not seen such a grotesque normality as this anywhere. The horror for him, the last lesson of the figure, was this appearance.

The face that appeared before him was as scarred as old Mad-Eye, but younger seeming than his was. It was brisk, tight, and strong. From what Harry could see, the cloak hid a muscular neck and shoulder line, a powerful essence that could stare back at Harry with such lifeless eyes, such a foul, amused grin. It looked, to put it bluntly, like Harry. But not Harry as he had ever seen himself, from his worst days to his worst nightmare. There was a twisted, altered sense to that face, and the eyes, the eyes had taken on a grey haziness, a departure from Harry's pure greens. The hair had retained the coal black demeanor but had taken on a few strands of glistening, almost mocking, silver standing bravely out front of the others.

Other than the obvious signs of strain, wear, and age, this was a perfect match. This was Harry. He could hear, in his mind, in that echoing laugh a touch of his laugh of old. He could not understand. How, why, was this apparition here? If it was himself from the future, how had it stayed so long? Did it use a time turner? Had it adapted beyond the need? What was its true purpose?

As these thoughts flew wildly in the chaos that was his mind, a sound caught his ear that brought some sense to this madness. It was a reminder, a reverberating reminder of the world beyond this microcosmic room, this ecosystem of darkness and pain. It began, like a cyclical tapping, like a soft whisper from beyond the borders. As Harry listened more closely, he realized that this was the hammering of spells upon the doorway, the attack of curses and shouts upon the hardwood and the protective spell of the figure.

The dragon, a powerful magical creature with armor and magical defense unlike any other creature before or any to come, could fall with the simultaneous strike of half dozen or so able-bodied wizards upon its scaled hide. However, a single strike upon the eyes would bring it to its knees. Harry could tell, from the rotation and alternation of the spells that the outsiders were firing, that they were too few in number simply to overpower the great spell, but were searching, eagerly and quickly for that point, that weak spot along the wall and doorway. He could even hear a little done beneath and above him.

The figure had done well in his protection. The room was practically impenetrable. There was always a weakness, however. Harry had found, just moments before, that he, too, had a very great weakness. He had crumbled from his pedestal of heroism and bravery, to that of a murderous fiend, desperately fighting the losing battle with an inner urge that was far superior to him. A beast had lived within him, all this time, might live within them all, and once unleashed, it would have its way, in the end. Like death, it was inevitable.

Regardless, Harry knew that their time was limited. The wizards and witches would find a weakness or eventually overpower the spell and seize the three of them. Or, the two of them. Looking over at the figure, he could sense some last act, some last terrible eventuality he would perpetrate. Harry could think of nothing more fitting than to leave Jan and him to the hands of the angry mob without. Then it struck, the reason.

"Yes, Potter, yes. You have come to it at last. I have told you that your destiny is to be a great one," the voice seemed uncharacteristically smooth and silky for the roughened visage. "You are to be remembered. Feared! Look around you; this is the birthplace of a god!"

"Humankind has often contemplated the rise of the great. Mostly they quibble over details of power struggles and persons killed off, hoping to tap upon that inexcusable thing without which the great are nothing. They know nothing, we know better. The great do not become great because they have begun with a lifelong goal of world domination. Those with that goal are swallowed by society at the first attempt to grow in power. It is the innocents, the ones with no conviction towards power, but the inner strength and idealistic directions towards helping their fellow men, who rise.

"Look at the great wizarding dictators, who had so much to overcome for the good of their respective countries, the expansion and pride there from. Yet, they failed, in the end. They became hungry, as all men will, for power and finally gave themselves willingly toward its dominion. This blinded them to reality. They were doomed from the start, but they did start.

"You, however, are different. You will not fail. I have seen it! In the back of the mind, you have lurking a demon, a viper, calling you to do ill, but the stronger half has resisted, impossibly over urges most of us cannot even comprehend. Yet, you have done ill. You have harmed, maimed, killed, and here you stand, determined still to destroy evil. You have done over such a powerful mindset that you are impervious to the call for power. Moreover, you shall have power. We just need to show the world one last demonstration and then you cannot live without wielding it.

"When those doors burst open, the ones beyond will be calling for blood. You cannot live without destroying them. And you cannot die because you will have lost all the hope that new and upcoming powers give you, your new understanding of your friends' ailment, that you might - one day - bring them back."

It paused, a laugh deep within its eye. Harry remained frozen. He had not needed this speech. It had come to him at once. He had seen it all, the horror and the hope. He had brought this ultimate misery upon them, upon himself, upon the world. There was no choice in it; he knew that. He had to save them. His life, a thousand lives, his very soul were nothing against that debt. He owed them all; he had, he knew, the very fabric of the world to give.

He had to strike out. This was not the beast within, but a righteous fury, an anger that wanted to wash out this string of truths, this knowledge from his system, from existence. He had but one target. "What, may I ask, do you gain by it? Who are you, really? Tell me no lies, no deceit, no evasions. Speak!" His voice grew more and more commanding, more and more infused with power and animation as he spoke. He could see the glow of success rising in the face of his adversary every passing moment.

"Can you not see? Is it not obvious? Did I not make it clear with my very actions? I am you. I am the projection of a part of you that you would not let free. You stifled emotions, good and bad, and they have come to life, physically given form to aid you on your way to greatness." Even as he said it, Harry could suddenly see faintness about its form, as though this question, once answered, triggered the deterioration of its physical being. Its purpose was served. It had gotten the message across. The rest was inevitable.

Yet, something troubled him still. Good and bad? How had that thing, that figure of his own foulness and darkness, the deceit with which the blackest part of his mind worked, had anything to do with goodness? On that, how could goodness have drawn him hence? As the figure faded, he longed to ask it this, but it was soon gone with a wicked smile and a wink. The very air about where it had stood seemed to mock his terrible doom.

"What did it mean, 'good'?" he asked aloud, senselessly.

"It meant me, Harry," spoke a voice behind him. He noticed Jan. He had forgotten her, for a moment. He did that often, it seemed. Harry looked at her closely. He nearly cried out. She was fading. How could it be? How could she not be real? They had spoken so often, touched, embraced. She had driven his friends' bus off the road! He could still see her in her ragged dresses, waiting what seemed a mile below him as he finished a building; saw the fear in her eyes as the dementors approached. Had that all been illusory? Had he gone insane?

"Harry," she said, voice softening such that Harry could hardly hear it over the increasing and more intrusive sounds from outside those double doors. "Whatever has happened, it doesn't matter. All that matters is your love for your friends. You do love them, don't you?" She let this hang in the air a moment. His silence answered. "Yes. They love you, too. This future, this horrible foretelling does not need to be. You can stop it. You can put it to rights. But only you know how. They said you would…they said."

She had faded nearly to a thin sliver; he reached out and brushed her hand as it began to wisp away. He wanted her to stay; she alone could possibly bring comfort, as she had of old. He wanted some reassurance, anything. He wanted to lose this sense of guilt, this sense of endless loss.

"One last thing, before I go," she began, "You cannot remain locked up. That began it all. Yes, before you confronted Voldemort. You distanced yourself from everyone; the title Chosen one did get to you, despite your efforts. You have to open up. Even to the bad side. It is all a part of you. Remember, it is all a part of you, love and hate, together."

One thing came to him. Just one more slice at his heart. If she were a part of him, then, he had driven that car; he had caused the accident. With her childlike fear heavily upon him, he had fled. He had run from the scene, uncertain of what he did. This was before those two had broken out entirely, but had been fighting for their freedom, their expression. He had done it all. He was a monster. He truly was a monster, wasn't he?

Jan, friend of friends, part of his mind, dissipated, and let fly her final words, "Goodbye, my hero." She was gone.

The quiet had become complete. His mind was blank. With both his hatred and love silent and still, at last, it was nothing but that indiscriminant judgment he had lived on for the past so many years. That being, it seems, knew nothing of what to do. He was flummoxed. He was…alone.

Despite the pain and despair this evening had brought, he had enjoyed the company, the constant companionship these last months had wrought. Nothing. No one. He was alone, finally returned to where he had sought to be. He hated it.

His friends, they were here, and soon others, but they would perish. The figure had seen it would be so. It knew. Jan was a sentimental dreamer. That part of him always had been. The same part had hoped, in vain, that he could save them. It was the same part that the figure, the dark side of his person, counted on to keep him living, hoping, dreaming for eternity. She was the same part of him that would not let him give up, would keep his hand ever upon monstrosity after monstrosity to last that one more day, the one more day until he might find a cure.

She had said there was a way. She said it did not have to be. This sounded as though she knew one thing more than she was telling. 'If she knew, then so do I! What could I do', he thought, 'that would save them now?' What could purge from them all the foulness, destroyed flesh, and that evil goop from their bodies? Harry could see, looking at them, that the substance from the break in time had coalesced closely with their inner essence, tying in closely to what kept them alive, shielding them from death, but in the same token, keeping them ever alive.

She knew. He had to know. Soon. The pounding had grown louder and louder. There were more. He was maintaining the shielding; he had been all along. He could feel the different strengths, he knew it would bend and break under the strain. It was a matter of moments. It was always a matter of moments, instances in time. It was always the little things.

The littlest of things. Like Jan. She was such a wan figure, little more than nothing, but had had a lot to say. He had not listened. Not well. He should have. What was it she said, something about not locking himself up? He needed to open. He remembered she always talked of his friends and their love for him and his for them. What was that strangeness about hate and love coinciding? It was a puzzle. It did not fit. The two were opposed. They did not belong together. They did not belong at all.

He tossed and turned these thoughts over in his mind. Memories with his friends came alongside. He would defend them to the end. He had to cure them. He had to find a way, no matter the cost. He saw Ron and he defeating the Troll, he saw the DA, he saw the group sitting around laughing one evening, just the sort of random memories that stay with you and sting so much. He saw the researching, looking for the power to defeat Voldemort, to drive out evil. That had done a lot of…

Harry saw it, a single line in minute writing, "This spell will purge all evil, but at a price; it is the plus and the minus, the all and the nothing." Harry had read that line a thousand times. It had never made sense. Now, it did. It didn't matter what had been. All that mattered was what he did now.

He closed his eyes and opened. A flood of emotions hit him like a stream of daggers. Pent up thoughts and feelings crushed the very innards of his self. He felt as he had not in years. It burned; it shamed him. He felt tears falling and heard himself screaming unspeakably. He was aflame. His mind and physical body burned with this emotional fire. It was too much. He was on his knees. He forced himself to stand, to take the pain that seemed eternal.

He could hear them, calling to him - his friends. He could hear each speaking, like that of someone trying to shout over a roaring engine, helplessly. He smiled in pain. They knew. He knew. It was enough.

He became aware, in a moment, of the order in the chaotic stresses within him. Therein lay a power he had never witnessed, the heat of hatred and the sweet lilac of love commingled freely and produced an unbearable offspring: pure life and death, together. Completely blinded physically, deafened, and cut off from the physical world, Harry could but see his friends, in his mind's eye. All his thought was on them as his world held unbending, still, and silent, the quiet ravaging his innards painfully.

He stood before them, glowing in a holy light of life. The barrier fell. So did the door. In rushed a hundred bodies, sweeping like a stream towards him, bearing down on him to strike from him the power he held over those before him. They were too late. He had made his move.

"_Lux Intus_!"

Time froze. A white-hot light flashed before him, sweeping from Harry's innermost point through the five bodies lying prone. It buzzed in the air with an electric fizzle that sent shivers through the spines of everyone present. The light went out as it passed out of Luna's body. It went uncannily dark. Harry crumpled. There was an absence of sight or sound. Everyone held still.

* * *

A few months later, the gossip had died down. It had been an incredible moment in the history of wizarding kind. No one had ever seen anything quite like what those witnesses had seen. Those present had been transformed. Many left there with a new outlook. Five had left there with a new lease on life.

Though dazed, the five had known much of what had happened, and were, for all anyone could tell, no worse off for their ordeal. They told others that they owed a great deal to their friend, Harry Potter, but would not elaborate. He had given them life, after unfortunately snatching it away years before, but they knew the true horrors he had faced, the incredible penance for his simple act of closing off from them, from everyone. They honored him above all others, but quietly and privately. They did not care for such public ceremonies as the Ministry prepared and did not come to them.

Now, with time back on their side, they tried to make the best of what time they had, for Harry. They each found something in life to make them happy, to make it worthwhile. Neville and Luna both took up teaching positions at Hogwarts; Neville taught Herbology, Luna taught a revamped version of History of Magic (Professor Binns finally took to his retirement). The pupils of both thought they were the greatest teachers, the greatest of friends.

Hermione and Ron took up positions at the Ministry, helping to revitalize the world that had become so insular, so scared. The bond of friendship they shared was heightened by their combined loss. They kept in close touch with all of the others.

Ginny took the loss of Harry painfully, going sadly out into the world. She did not see the same happiness the others had found in love and occupations, but she might, someday. Harry would have wanted her to. He died so they might live, took on his misery for their happiness. Besides, she would see him again one day; meet him beyond the known world where he would be waiting for their next great adventure. That much she truly did believe.


End file.
